{"id":453,"date":"2016-06-01T22:43:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T22:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/?p=453"},"modified":"2016-06-06T18:47:58","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T18:47:58","slug":"mental-health-in-academic-research-a-systematic-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/01\/mental-health-in-academic-research-a-systematic-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental Health in Academic Research – A Systematic Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

“In recent years, a crisis has been building in academia,” says this post<\/a> on Polygeia. University counseling services report increasing demand<\/a>\u00a0due to rising\u00a0\u00a0numbers of students with serious and complex mental health problems. From what we’ve either seen or heard from colleagues,\u00a0mental health problems are very common in academia, but it is surprisingly difficult to find hard data to back this claim, especially since open discussion of these topics is socially discouraged in lab environments. A recent report that came out of Berkeley<\/a> last year points to 47% of PhD and 37% of masters students scoring as depressed. While these numbers are estimates and not clinical diagnoses, the few studies available in peer-review journals produced numbers of a similar scale. In an UK study<\/a>, mental health issues among academics were estimated as high as 53%, while an Australian study<\/a> found that mental illness among academic staff was three to four times higher than the national average. These numbers have to be handled and reported with care, but they are really concerning and point out\u00a0that this issue needs to be urgently addressed.<\/p>\n

So if a proportion of us working in academia experience mental health issues, why are not more people talking about it? You’ll be as surprised as we were to find that people are indeed talking about it. The Guardian has published three (scream-yes-at-your-computer-because-you-agree)<\/em> excellent articles on the topic. The first\u00a0one was a blog post<\/a> on the Guardian Higher Education Network<\/a> that criticized a \u201cculture of acceptance around mental health issues in academia\u201d. Indeed, it was an unprecedented response to this article, pointing to high levels of distress among academics, that lead to this one <\/a>outlining possible reasons for why mental health problems are on the rise among UK academics, and another one<\/a> to provide tips and resources for those needing help. Due to some online comment-based criticism this article received, a follow up made clear that such \u201cstories are not cries of the privileged\u201d<\/a>, and that such a marginalization of mental health problems among academics does not only hurt the ones suffering, but also hinders a long needed discussion about mental health issues in society as a whole.<\/p>\n

And people at the Guardian\u00a0(thank you guys!) aren’t the only ones being brave enough to talk about the issues that still often face stigmatisation in our society. Dr. Nadine Muller in the humanities has an entire section in her blog titled, “Academia and Mental Health.”<\/a> Michael D Plant<\/a> from here at Oxford\u00a0wrote a brave, personal and non-anonymous account<\/a> of his battle with depression. \u00a0You can go through the guardian articles, the Berkeley study, and Dr. Muller’s blog and find countless personal tales, mostly anonymous, of people who have battled it through the system. Some coming in are already predisposed to issues in mental health, others not so. The underlying trend in all of these stories seems to be the enormous pressure faced by trainees in academia, coupled with a lack of support, mentorship, and accountability in the mentors, departments, and universities.<\/p>\n

Both the US<\/a>\u00a0and UK<\/a>\u00a0recognize the huge restructuring that needs to happen in scientific academia if it is to remain sustainable in the near future and suggest solutions to the systemic problems. In her article, “How to Build a Better PhD,”<\/a> Julie Gould acknowledges “we need to transform graduate education within five years. It’s imperative.” But while all three of these articles cite different solutions to the problems that plague the industry, none mention the problem of mental and emotional health in both trainees and established academics, even in those sections that acknowledge the need for a restructuring of the training systems and investment in people. Also interesting to note is that there is always a mention of the system’s or trainee’s (mainly in expectations) flaws, but never of the trainer’s, despite countless suggestions (see the Berkeley article) by trainees that PIs and mentors are in dire need of management courses.<\/p>\n

The lack of institute acknowledgement of mental health issues comes as no surprise, as there are few studies which point to the numbers affected, as outlined in an article in the New Scientist<\/a>, and science policy is driven by numbers. And having data\u00a0is incredibly important, as this blog post by Dr. Dorothy \u00a0Bishop<\/a> shows us. Misinterpreting the data or only telling one side of the story for the sake of a cause, whatever that cause may be, only damages it more than it helps. And because we are not social scientists, we can only call on an increase in sampling and public release of the data that exists out there on the emotional well-being of scientists and academics so that real change can come along and accountability be included into our culture.<\/p>\n

I doubt we will ever see any paper calling for an actual change in policy that affects the\u00a0culture of how we do science. It should also not surprise us that the people writing these articles, however well-intentioned they may be, are all established academics who went through the training process in a different era and culture. Though science trainees may be heard (in places such as the Berkeley survey and others run in academia across the world) we are not necessarily being listened to, and those on top are reluctant to bring about any significant change at the individual or cultural level. This causes a hopelessness towards real change that goes along with feelings of depression. Many are the stories we have heard of overly frustrated graduate students and Postdocs whose voices are lost amidst the “support figures” and committees which remain largely (pardon the pun) non-committal to the graduate’s well-being.<\/p>\n

There is much to be said and much to be discussed about this topic and all the factors that feed into it. We hope that in the coming months we can gather enough resources and ideas from people to bring about measurable change. In other sectors, psychologists have long known that happy, emotionally-invested people make for the most creative and productive people. So while we would be happy promoting emotional well-being for its own sake, we hypothesize that academic science should be no different, and that investing in happy, involved, and amazed trainees (which we all are at the start!) will benefit the labs, institutes, and funding bodies too.<\/p>\n

And if you’re someone who has been struggling with your post-graduate experience, the one thing we can tell you for sure is that you are not alone.<\/p>\n

Co-authored by Juan Pablo Ruiz\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In recent years, a crisis has been building in academia,” says this post on Polygeia. University counseling services report increasing demand\u00a0due to rising\u00a0\u00a0numbers of students with serious and complex mental health problems. From what we’ve either seen or heard from colleagues,\u00a0mental health problems are very common in academia, but it is surprisingly difficult to find … Continue reading Mental Health in Academic Research – A Systematic Problem<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[39,38],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7z5Ki-7j","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":526,"url":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/07\/mental-health-issues-in-academia-a-documentary\/","url_meta":{"origin":453,"position":0},"title":"Mental Health Issues in Academia – a Documentary","date":"June 7, 2016","format":"image","excerpt":"We have become aware of an amazing initiative taking place that aims to bring light to the struggles of PhD students suffering from mental health issues during their\u00a0studies through\u00a0a documentary. If you or anyone you know might be interested in this, please see the advertisement below for more information. We\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/labmosphere.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/thumbnail_Mental-Health-Pic-300x217.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":589,"url":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/2016\/07\/12\/why-do-so-many-graduate-students-quit\/","url_meta":{"origin":453,"position":1},"title":"Why Do So Many Graduate Students Quit?","date":"July 12, 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"Two different people have recently pointed out this article on the Atlantic to us,\u00a0adding to our growing list of articles addressing\u00a0problems in the environments graduate students and academics need to survive in.\u00a0Burnout, mental health issues, and toxic relationships are but a few of these problems: \"Many students are convinced the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Interesting Articles"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":794,"url":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/04\/oktosay-lets-talk-mental-health\/","url_meta":{"origin":453,"position":2},"title":"#OktoSay: Let’s Talk Mental Health","date":"June 4, 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"Last month was mental health awareness month. Because of this, when our friends over at Chronically Academic asked me to write a blog for their site, I decided to send them this piece on my recent realizations after battling with my own mental health issues, and in the way that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Neurodiversity"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":710,"url":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/05\/redefining-success-stories-introduction\/","url_meta":{"origin":453,"position":3},"title":"Redefining Success Stories – Introduction","date":"November 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"As scientists and academics, we are all familiar with the talks given by respected group heads, both men and women, about balancing work and life, and what paths they took to get to their successful careers. And while these talks do open our perspectives as to what is and isn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Redefining Scientific Success"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":726,"url":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/2016\/12\/04\/academia-incompatible-with-family-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":453,"position":4},"title":"Academia Incompatible with Family Life","date":"December 4, 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"Here is yet another article pointing to the larger issue in academia of increasing competitiveness and a focus and glorification of an unhealthy lifestyle.\u00a0While social scientists continue to correlate mental well-being and balanced time spent with loved ones with creativity and productivity, our culture continues to push us away from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Interesting Articles"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":850,"url":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/2017\/11\/19\/choosing-the-right-mentor-for-career-success\/","url_meta":{"origin":453,"position":5},"title":"Choosing the Right Mentor for Career Success","date":"November 19, 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"An excellent article has just been published on the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) blog, by Pinar Gurel and Adriana Bankston, summarizing recent efforts by the Future of Research and collaborating organizations on mentoring. In the article, they provide great advice for graduate students and postdocs seeking to expand\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Exceptional Mentors"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519,"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions\/519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labmosphere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}