Subjective Quality of Life and Psychiatric Morbidity among School Teachers in Abeokuta,South-West Nigeria

Aims: To measure subjective Quality of Life and its relationship to psychiatric morbidity and socio-demographic variables in secondary school teachers in Abeokuta, Ogun state, Nigeria.

Study Design: Cross-sectional.

Place and Duration of Study: 10 selected public secondary schools in Abeokuta between November 2014 and March 2015.

Methodology: The study was carried out among 341 school teachers in two stages. The 1st stage involved the administration of the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-BREF) and the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), to all teachers to measure their subjective Quality of Life and to screen for a probable psychiatric disorder. In the second stage, subjects who were GHQ-positive and a proportion of those who were GHQ-negative were assessed using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview to diagnose a depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, somatization disorder and pain disorder.

Results: The mean scores of the domains of Quality of Life were; physical (70.7±12.9), environment (61.7±13.4), social (72.0±12.9) and psychological (72.2±11.2). The estimated true prevalence of psychiatric morbidity was 21.9%. The prevalence rates for depressive disorder, somatization disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and pain disorder were 11.1%, 5.6%, 5.9% and 12.9% respectively. The prevalence of having more than 1 of the 4 definitive disorders was 10.0%. The univariate analysis showed that age (F = 4.15, p = .007), length of years of service (F = 3.69, p = .006) and salary grade level (F = 3.62, p = .03) had significant association with the environment domain of QOL. Marital status (F = 3.79, p = .02) showed significant association with the social domain of QOL. While the teacher’s school category (F = 3.31, p = .03) was significantly associated with the psychological domain of QOL. The multivariate linear regression analysis, found that subjects who had spent the longest number of years in the teaching service had the best QOL on the environment domain (ß = 11.177, t = 2.365, p = .019), the married teachers had the best QOL on the social domain (ß = 10.555, t = 2.494, p = .013) while teachers in junior secondary schools had the best QOL in the psychological domain (ß = 4.205, t = 2.143, p =.033). The study found significant associations between probable psychiatric morbidity and all the domains of Subjective Quality of Life.

Conclusions: The study showed that the subjective QOL among the sample of school teachers was strongly influenced by their length of years of service, marital status and teacher’s school categories. It also showed that there was a high prevalence of probable and definitive psychiatric morbidity among secondary school teachers and this correlated negatively to Subjective QOL. There is a need to focus on policies and practices that will improve the QOL of school teachers, and in the development of preventive strategies against mental illness and in providing treatment for persons with psychiatric disorders in the workplace.