Teacher mental health is an important predictor of student outcomes and workforce retention. Teacher mental health has been declining across the developed world, possibly due to increasing job demands, however the reasons are unclear and such declines have been consistent with declines in the wider population and so may not be related to teaching.
We identified a non-linear decline in mental health occurred among Australian teachers after 2011, while the prevalence of high job demands remained stable. The sudden decline appears to be due to increasing sensitivity to the demands of the job among teachers. This clarifies the mental health decline was related to teaching, but not necessarily due to changes in the job demands – instead teachers are more vulnerable to high job demands than previously.
Our results show teaching has been a demanding job (since at least 2005), but we now have evidence that teacher resilience has changed. Government, schools and researchers could focus on how to understand and improve resilience at multiple levels to help teachers.