Basic psychological needs and psychological health in teacher candidates

This research sets out to examine the ties between prospective teachers' autonomy, abilities and relation needs and their psychological health according to the Self-determination Theory (SDT). For our purposes, the Brief Symptom Inventory and the Basic Psychological Needs Scale were applied to the teacher candidates attending the Faculty of Education. The findings indicated that there were negative significant correlations between the basic psychological needs and the psychological symptoms, and that the basic psychological needs contributed to psychological health. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.