An Analysis of the Effect of Job Satisfaction on Teachers\' Mental Health

Background and Aim: One of the dimensions of health is mental health that could be affected by the quality of occupational life. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of job satisfaction on teachers' mental health with due consideration of the moderating role of gender and the subjects taught. Materials and Methods: This was a quantitative survey using a questionnaire including a sample of 373 teachers, selected by multistage random sampling, from among all (n = 1500) the secondary school first- and second-grade teachers in Najafabad city, Isfahan Province, Iran. Data analysis was done using the software AMOS and SPSS. Results: The confirmatory factor analysis of the items showed that these items could explain 63.25% of the variance of the mental health construct. In addition, the standard effect of job satisfaction on mental health was found to be 0.37 (p <0.001), explaining 13% of the mental health construct variance. Further analysis of the data showed that the teachers’ mean mental health construct (66.64) and their mean of job satisfaction (73.90) were lower and higher than the means of the respective spectra (p <0.001), respectively. Conclusion: Job satisfaction, which has been proven to affect the teachers’ mental health, can improve their personal and social life and make them more efficient in education. In this regard, gender and the type of subject taught can have moderating effects on the relationship between job satisfaction and mental health of the teachers. Based on the beta-values (0.55 for the women group and 0.68 for the experimental science teachers group), the gender female and teaching experimental science can have a stronger effect on the teachers’ mental health than gender male and teaching subjects other than experimental science.