Abstract:

Background: Globally anxiety and substance use disorders at workplace has a significant contributor as burden of disease and a major public health concern which affects people in all communities across the world. Substance use at work place also has a great significant and goes hand in hand with anxiety disorders as a major public health concern which affect all workers in different levels all over the world.

Aim: This study aims to determine the prevalence and associated factors of anxiety and substance use among secondary and primary school teachers.

Method: This was a cross sectional study, where a total of 300 secondary and primary staffs teachers were recruited and interviewed by using GAD-7 for Anxiety and Audit and Dast for substance use.

Results: Majority of participants were female with 52.52% while male participants were 47.48% and 61.15% were married. 56.83% of the participants were primary school teachers and 43.17% were secondary school teachers. Prevalence of anxiety among teachers were found to be 46.33% with 13.00% found to have mild anxiety, 12.33% moderate anxiety and 53.67% have severe anxiety. Marital status, education level, employment time and harmful alcohol use were significantly associated with anxiety. The prevalence of substance use among primary and secondary school teachers were found to be 32%, where by 16% among them were found have harmful use alcohol. There is significant correlation between anxiety and alcohol use among teachers and these leads to increase in absenteeism, drop in work performance and loss of man power.

Conclusion: Since there is high prevalence of anxiety and substance use among staff teachers, therefore there is a need to increase access and availability of counselling services and outreach services to primary and secondary school teachers so as to create awareness about mental health.