Job Stress and General Health Among University Teachers in the Moroccan Context

Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate occupational stress and general health among university professors, stress is measured by the Walter Gmelch Index (FSI), while general health was screened by the D. Goldberg GHQ-28 test. A collection of qualitative and quantitative data was carried out under the assumption that the stress at work perceived by the person correlates with his general health result.One hundred and twenty-five students (101 men, 20 women; aged 29-62) took part in this study with a kit that includes the two indices (FSI and GHQ-28) and a set of sociodemographic variables.The results revealed that a large part of the participants suffering from chronic stress and almost half of the subjects (48.76%) suffering from psychic disorders or somatization. The study also affirms our starting hypothesis on a significant correlation between the general state of health and the state of perceived stress. Statistical analysis also reveals a correlation between GHQ and certain institutional variables (grade and seniority at work).This study expresses the importance of a psychological first aid kit available to health professionals which makes it possible to estimate the prevalence of psychological distress in a given population and to detect psychosomatic cases which escape the general practitioner.