Mental Health in Public Universities: A Comparison Between Brazilian and Canadian Professors

Mental health, an important object of research in Psychology as well as Social Psychology, can be determined by the relationship between psychological well-being and psychological distress. In this context, we search to understand: How do compare mental health of professors working in public universities in an emerging country like Brazil with the one of professors working in a developed country like Canada? What are the main differences in the indicators of mental health in work domain? How Mental Health affects Work-Life Balance? To answer these questions, this paper assesses Mental Health and Work-Life Balance for professors working in these two countries and test for their differences. The sample consists of 354 Brazilian professors and 317 Canadian professors. Data were collected through an on-line questionnaire assessing the following Mental Health indicators: anxiety, depression, loss of control, general positive effectiveness and emotion ties. We compared the components of Psychological Distress and Psychological Well-Being with the indicator of Work-Life Balance to analyse their relations. Reliability analyses demonstrated that all tested components are consistent to evaluate Mental Health and Work-Life Balance. Correlation analyses showed the components of Psychological Distress are negatively related to Work-Life Balance, whereas the components of Psychological Well-Being are positively related to Work-Life Balance. There are some small mean differences between Brazilians and Canadians professors in all five components of Mental Health, but these differences are not statistically significant. Mean differences for Work-Life Balance, gender, age, and Bias of Conformity are statistically different, although the size effects are small. Linear regression analysis, step by step, controlled for Life Events, showed that General Positive Effectiveness, Anxiety and Emotion Ties predict 31.5% of the scores of Work-Life Balance. Additionally, we observed that Brazilian professors find more balance between professional and private life than do their Canadian colleagues.