Social determinants of health and the well-being of the early care and education workforce: the role of psychological capital

Social determinants of health and the well-being of the early care and education workforce: the role of psychological capital Charlotte V. Farewell, Priyanka Shreedar, Diane Brogden, Jini E. Puma Journal of Public Mental Health, Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print, pp.- The early care and education (ECE) workforce plays a pivotal role in shaping early childhood developmental trajectories and simultaneously experiences significant mental health disparities. The purpose of this study is to investigate how social determinants of health and external stressors are associated with the mental health of ECE staff, which represent a low-resourced segment of the workforce; how psychological capital (psycap) can mitigate these associations.The authors administered an 89-item survey to 332 ECE staff employed in 42 Head Start centers in the USA. The authors ran three hierarchical linear regression models to analyze associations between social determinants of health, external sources of stress, psycap and potential moderation effects and mental health outcomes.Individuals experiencing greater finance-related stress reported 0.15 higher scores on the depression scale and 0.20 higher scores on the anxiety scale than those experiencing less finance-related stress (p < 0.05). Individuals experiencing greater work-related stress reported 1.26 more days of poorer mental health in the past month than those experiencing less work-related stress (p < 0.01). After controlling for all socio...
Source: Journal of Public Mental Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: research