Do teachers have worse mental health? Review of the existing comparative research and results from the Belgian Health Interview Survey

• Review reveals that evidence for worse mental health of teachers is not conclusive.
• New study: Teachers do not report more mental illness than 31 other occupations.
• Jobs for the less educated workers are more likely to have mental illness than teachers.
• No differences were found in the mental illness between different types of teachers.

It is widely believed that teachers have a higher risk of developing mental health problems when compared with other professions. That claim, however, is more often stated as a fact than as the outcome of empirical research. Against that background, we (1) critically review the existing empirical studies on teachers' mental health and (2) use the Belgian Health Interview Survey (n = 7381) to compare teachers with 31 other occupations on five mental health indicators: psychological impairment, somatization, depressive, anxiety, and sleeping disorder. The idea that teachers have worse mental health than other professionals is less conclusive than often assumed.