Occupational Mental Stress Assessment of Elementary School Teachers and Firefighters – Rescuers

The presented study aims to compare occupational stress of 50 teachers and 56 firefighters. Both these groups are laden with high exposure to work-related stress. For assessing the occupational load the Meister questionnaire was used. We found that teachers percieved their occupational stress worse than firefighters and reached the 2nd degree of load. They complained mostly about the factor of overload and factors of the stress reactions – fatigue, mental overload and unacceptability to perform pedagogical work in the same intensity for a long time. Firefighters achieved better results (1st degree of load), even better than the population norm. An explanation may be found in the fact that firefighters represent a selected population of emotionally, psychically and physically resistant individuals.