Psychological distress and associated factors among Japanese nursery schooland kindergarten teachers: a cross-sectional study

摘要

The understaffing of nursery schools and kindergartens and the increasing workload ofchildcare workers are becoming significant issues in Japan. In this study, across-sectional survey was conducted to investigate the stress experienced by childcareworkers and its antecedents. We distributed 2,640 questionnaires to childcare workers inMiyagi prefecture, obtaining a response rate of 51.9%(n=1,370). Finally, 1,210 valid questionnaires were used inthe analysis. As a stress indicator, psychological distress was measured with the KesslerScreening Scale for Psychological Distress (K6). The mean K6 score was 7.0 (SD=5.4), andthe prevalence of psychological distress (K6 score ≥5) was 60.0%. Considering work-relatedfactors, the mean scores were as follows: supervisor support 11.8 (2.6), coworker support12.1 (2.0), work engagement 3.2 (1.2), and effort-reward ratio 0.93 (0.53). A multivariatelogistic regression analysis with adjustment for possible confounders revealed thatincreased psychological distress was associated with higher effort-reward ratio, lowersupport from supervisors and coworkers, lower work engagement, and insufficient sleep.These results suggest that elevated psychological distress is strongly associated witheffort-reward imbalance, while high work engagement in childcare workers helped to reducetheir distress.