Navigating Mental Health Challenges in Academia
I am a postdoctoral researcher and as such I had to face several challenges during my scientific career either professional (deadlines, workload, Pay) or personal (relationship, loss, distance from friends and family) nature which impacted my mental health one way or another. For me mental health refers to my current mental state of wellbeing, which is by default dynamic and is changing with different stressors. I would consider myself a rather patient, resilient person who has established already a certain set of tools to balance and improve my mental health if needed.
Here is one of my personal experiences that should illustrate vividly why there is an urgent need to discuss this topic:
My boss and I agreed and set up a meeting that was meant to discuss and evaluate my previous but also upcoming scientific projects and ultimately my further career path. Until recently I was involved in a scientific project that required a lot of my time and dedication but I did manage to achieve all goals that have been agreed upon beforehand. Although there were other people involved, the main workload and responsibility was carried by me. I informed my boss in the beginning of the said meeting that although I was happy to have successfully finished the project I felt that my mental health was negatively affected and I asked for mutual understanding that I might work less efficiently in the coming weeks. During our discussion the topic of pursuing an academic career came up and when asked for feedback my boss pointed out that I indeed seem to be sensitive to stress and they thus advised against a career in academia. I did feel this argument came out of the blue, because I never discussed any mental health issues with my boss at all and the project was successfully completed. My interpretation was that by admitting that my mental health was impacted I was making myself seem vulnerable and weak to my boss. My lesson out of this experience was: do not discuss any mental health issues because it is easily stigmatized and used against you, which is unfortunate because we should rather be more transparent and open in discussing mental health.
To make my point clear: I considered long working days (12+ hours) and weeks (Saturday and Sundays, sometimes more than 60 working hours a week) and unusual working hours (6pm – 4am) due to heavily used instruments to be acceptable. What impacted my mental health were: unrealistic deadlines, lack of recognition of my hardship, workload and achievements, lack of support in authorship discussion, lack of recognition of contribution to other scientific projects, little support and the general feeling I would have been solely responsible in case of failure to deliver the project goals.