A Comparative Study Of Coping Mechanisms, Job Burnout, And Psychological Health Among Iranian And Indian High School Teachers.

The main goal of this research was to investigate the impact of defense mechanisms in job depreciation, mental health, and control and prevention. The goal is also to find the difference in taking advantage of defense mechanisms (problem-centered and excitement-oriented) and teacher depreciation in the areas of “emotional tiredness”, ‘depersonalization’, and “lack of personal success” among Iranian and Indian teachers and the review of depreciation role in teachers’ mental health.

The study method is of descriptive and correlational type. In order to evaluate the variables several questionnaire were used. These included The Maslach Burnout inventory by Maslach and Jackson (1981), Questionnaire on the ways of coping, by Lazarus and Folkman (1984), and the Symptom Check List (SCL 90-R) by Derogatis (1975). The sample consisted of 300 Iranian teachers in high schools in Tehran and 300 Indian teachers in high schools in Puna. They were selected by random sampling in relation with the mass of people in the society. The Pearson correlation test was utilized in order to analyze the data and specify the relation between research variables under study. This was done also to identify the relation between variables and analyze one-way and two-way analysis of variance.

The results showed that 1) there is significant differences between male teachers and female teachers in the use of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping mechanisms. The male teachers had higher job burnout in the areas of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization compared to the female teachers. This was not true however in the area of loss of personal accomplishment. 2) There is significant difference among male and female teachers in using excitement-oriented defense mechanisms. The Iranian female teachers use more excitement-centered defense mechanisms compared to Iranian male teachers. This is while the Indian male instructors have more use of this method in comparison with the Indian female teachers. 3) There is significant difference in depreciation (emotional exhaustion and depersonalization) among female and male teachers and the male teachers possess more job depreciation (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization) compared to the female teachers. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference in job depreciation (lack of personal success) among female and male teachers. 4) There were significant positive correlation between job burnout variables and psychological health variables among the female and male teachers.

There is negative correlation between the job burnout variable (loss of personal accomplishment) and some of the psychological heath variables among female and male teachers in Iran and India.