PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

This paper investigates the issue of underdeveloped mental health literacy amongst Malaysian teachers, a problematic phenomenon that leads to a school’s inability to successfully address student mental health issues. When untreated, student mental illness can manifest in aggressive or disruptive behaviours that create an unsafe educational environment. This paper explores five Malaysian teachers’ experiences of the external factors that facilitate and hinder them from developing their mental health literacy to examine the issue of underdeveloped teacher mental health literacy. The authors employed a qualitative design where data from semi-structured interviews were analysed thematically and found eleven factors—four facilitators and seven barriers—that influence the development of teachers’ mental health literacy. The four facilitators identified were school counsellors, supportive colleagues, inclusion of mental health topics in the curriculum, and Ministry of Education programmes on teacher mental health. The seven barriers identified were superstitions, societal disbelief in mental illness, unhelpful admin staff, the ignorance of older colleagues, dismissive parents, teachers’ overwhelming workload, and teachers’ lack of time. The findings suggested that developing teacher mental health literacy is possible with the necessary support and a whole-school approach. They also imply the integral role all members of the learning community play in developing teacher MHL. Future studies can expand upon the findings by examining the factors that influence the MHL development of the other members of the school community. The small sample size and narrow participant requirements limit this study's scope.

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