In the last several years, issues relating to mental health and well-being in academia have attracted increasing attention from researchers and in the popular press. Although scholars have long recognised that academia can be a stressful and demanding profession, it has been argued that the current situation is so serious that it should be described as a “crisis”. Both university staff and students are reporting high levels of stress and burnout, both of which can have serious consequences for mental health and well-being. In a recent review of the scholarly literature, work by Guthrie et al. (2017) found that “proportions of both university staff and postgraduate students with a risk of having or developing a mental health problem, based on self-reported evidence, were generally higher than for other working populations.”
Read More »Losing Belonging, Value, and Financial Safety to Motherhood: An International Student’s PhD Story by Joyce Vromen
In the early stages of my PhD, I felt like I belonged. With not just hard work and passion carrying me through, but the sense of fitting the system being like cycling with the wind in your back. I arrived as a motivated international PhD student on the other side of the world, full of ambition and excitement, eager to prove myself, contribute, and learn.
I had grown up in The Netherlands with a keen interest in human behaviour and cognition. I completed my bachelor degree at the Radboud University Nijmegen and then went on to complete a highly competitive 2-year research master degree cum laude at the University of Amsterdam. As part of this latter program, I first ended up in Australia, interning in a university research lab. Looking back now, I would describe my young self as bright, ambitious, and adventurous. These days, being a mother to two teenage daughters, I can’t help but feel quite fond of and protective towards this young woman.
What I didn’t imagine was becoming a mother of twins in the middle of my PhD – and how quickly that would unravel my academic identity, financial independence, and mental wellbeing. I eventually developed depression in the aftermath of my PhD, psychotic depression to be precise. The main signs were extreme tiredness, low energy levels, cynicism, feelings of excessive self-doubt, impostor feelings, and for short bursts during periods of depression, experiences of delusions and hallucinations centring around not being good enough. It all felt very confusing and overwhelming and I initially experienced intense shame over my mental health status. Especially around my psychotic symptoms. I had internalized society its strong stigma still associated with such mental health challenges and it compounded my feelings of being an outsider and failure.
Read More »Living with Chronic Illness in Academia: How MS Transformed My Understanding of Relationships and Support by Ronan Carbery
Multiple sclerosis (MS) entered my life in 2013 with my wife’s diagnosis. We spent time learning to manage the condition and moved to another city to be able to draw on family support while understanding the nature of the disease. This learning curve steepened dramatically when cancer complicated her condition in 2015, leading to two years of treatment that pushed MS management into the background. When she achieved remission, we thought we’d found our new normal.
In 2023, ten years after her diagnosis, I learned I had MS too. I went from being a supportive partner to someone living with the condition myself. The medical reality was compounded by the psychological weight of uncertainty about career sustainability and whether I could maintain the professional identity I had spent years building. The persistent worry was whether disclosing this would mark me as damaged goods, potentially derailing any chance of promotion or career advancement. This has prompted two years of reflection on my part on how chronic illness changes not just what we do as academics, but how we relate to the colleagues who make that work possible.
Read More »Hidden Health Crisis: Navigating Early Menopause, Chronic Illness, and Precarious Academia by Dr. Aikaterini (Katrina) Tavoulari
Chronic health conditions, fertility struggles, and the precarity of academic life shape the lives of countless academics, yet these truths often remain unspoken in professional spaces. I was preparing to defend my PhD when my body quietly, irrevocably, rewrote the script of my future without consent or asking permission.
The floral dress I chose for that appointment, a cheerful yellow dotted with tiny daisies, hung perfectly as I sat across from doctor. They delivered news that forced me to rethink every assumption I had carried for over thirty years, back when I was still in my thirties, long before I crossed into my forties. Premature ovarian failure syndrome. The clinical terms couldn’t soften the reality: my body was moving into menopause decades ahead of schedule, taking with it the easy assumption that I had time to figure out motherhood later, after I finished my viva, after I started my postdoc, after I finally found a permanent position.
What followed wasn’t just a health crisis; it was a collision between the relentless demands of academic life and the sudden fragility of my own body. This is the story of how I learned that survival in academia isn’t just about publishing papers and securing funding; sometimes it’s about learning to live authentically in a world that rewards high performance above all else.
Read More »Navigating the Labyrinth: On Chronic Illness, Graduate School, and Finding Wholeness by Laura Dickey
Working towards your PhD while grappling with chronic mental and physical health conditions… well, sucks. Graduate school is often depicted as a training ground for intellectual growth, a hallmark of academic rigor providing access to a playground of ivory towers. For many, it’s a demanding but ultimately rewarding journey. However, for those of us navigating graduate school while grappling with chronic health conditions, the experience can be a labyrinth of unexpectedly demanding challenges.
My own journey as a PhD student in Philosophy has been profoundly shaped by my experiences with Bipolar Type II Disorder and chronic pain. While graduate school has tested my resilience, it has also given me a new perspective on community, self-worth and the journey of coping in the face of adversity. This post explores how these experiences have influenced my academic development, pushing me to redefine success in my own terms. Ultimately, I hope to share a lesson that has been critical to my journey: authentic participation in community can create profound feelings of wholeness and belonging, providing an anchor for stability amidst the demands of academic life.
Read More »Persisting and Prevailing: Part-time PhD Study Through a Pandemic by Anonymous
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, I went straight from redundancy and burnout to a full-time research masters, then embarked on a full-time PhD. I was regularly commuting between cities to have separate, quiet study space and returning home as my place of rest, as I’m neurodivergent and need the structure of separating studying and home life.
Nevertheless, the burnout was lurking and around a year into the PhD, I decided I needed to go part-time. I scoured the funder and university policies, then referred to the sections on part-time study to help make my case. One supervisor questioned if I wanted to continue with the PhD. Without hesitation, I responded emphatically “yes”. Finding something difficult is not the same as not wanting or being unable to do it, and the easiest way is not always the best way. I had secured this opportunity to research the only topic I would have pursued, and I was not prepared to let it go.
Read More »The Mask by Anonymous
I am a flawed, ambitious, and entirely ordinary human who wears a mask daily at work.
I put the mask on as I get into my car to drive to work or social engagements, and I take it off as I walk through the front door of my home. It is not a deliberate costume that I don and remove, akin to a Jane Austen period drama. Instead, it is a learned psychological survival mechanism that I have been employing for as long as I can remember, to the extent that I have lost track of when it is on, its appearance, or its functionality. It has become an integral part of my being.
I am neurodivergent, I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and I have a life-limiting, incurable autoimmune illness. Very few people know this because I wear a mask of a neurotypical, mentally and physically healthy person.
And it’s exhausting.
The mask saps my energy, my spirit, my cognitive processing ability.
Unlike the notion of “I need a nap,” which may seem relatively manageable, the exhaustion experienced when one has depleted all cognitive space to engage in conversations with one’s spouse and child at the end of the day feels more profound. In this blog I’ll talk about my experiences living with these illnesses and their impact on my life and career to date.
Read More »Considerations and Challenges of Overseas Research Visits: My Experience as an Autistic Woman by Lucy Rodgers
I recently had the privilege of being funded to travel overseas (UK to Australia) to visit a leading academic in my field. I am sharing my experience with you because I am an internally presenting autistic woman (the kind often subjected to the “but you don’t seem autistic” comments). Perhaps because of how I appear, it might be assumed that travelling across continents to a completely new environment, solo, would be no less challenging for me than for a neurotypical person. Autism is not a mental illness, but I experience generalised anxiety in response to trying to fit into a hectic, unpredictable world, which is incompatible with my brain.
Read More »Bouncing Back: Coping Effectively with Academic Setbacks by Vineet Arora
I remember the first time a journal editor rejected my article. I sat staring at the email, feeling like someone had just deflated my academic “balloon”. I had poured my heart and soul into that manuscript, and here it was, marked with a big red “no.” It felt like being in school all over again, where the teacher hands back your paper covered in corrections.
During my time as a sessional academic working in higher education, I have experienced many more rejections. While many of these have been challenging and disappointing, I have reached a point where I accept them and try to learn from the experiences. As I explain in this blog, I believe that developing my psychological resources and utilizing coping strategies has enabled me to handle these rejections constructively. In the next sections, I discuss how my self-efficacy as well as resilience, courage, and spirituality have helped me on my journey. I also share the importance of maintaining my wellbeing during stressful times and learning from my supervisors to help me cope with rejections.
Read More »Help! Universities won’t commit! Why fixed-term contracts are harmful to mental health by Anonymous
Recent research reveals that around two thirds of University Research Staff in the UK are employed on fixed-term contracts, which are usually less than two years. This practice has no end in sight. One of my colleagues jumped between fixed-term contracts for 17 years. I am just starting my fifth year on a series of fixed-term contracts.
What does this do to academics’ mental health? In a 2019 study in the UK, “two-thirds of respondents (71%) said they believed their mental health had been damaged by working on insecure contracts and more than two-fifths (43%) said it had impacted on their physical health.” This is not a surprise. As many readers will know, insecure work in academia means incessant rounds of redundancy, endless job applications in a notoriously difficult job market, regularly changing employers, or even moving across the country. Or you could choose the route of writing laborious and hugely competitive grant applications mostly in your own time. The stakes are high: your economic survival. As such, accepting a fixed-term contract can be a risky strategy.
I am a mental health researcher, a mum, a person who lives with mental illness, and a lover of the outdoors. I am passionate about achieving research impact, and an advocate of lived-experience research. I want to make this clear: I wholeheartedly love my career, my academic research work, my job, and my excellent and supportive team. I love the intellectual challenge, I love the creativity and problem solving. I love doing impactful research that makes a difference, building networks, collaborating, writing and reading. I thrive in my job, and I am good at it. However, my fixed-term contract is harming my mental health.
Read More »Navigating Anxiety in an Experimental Lab: Personal Growth and Peer Support by Janaky Sunil
When people think of someone pursuing a PhD, they often focus on the prestige and intellectual fulfilment associated with earning the degree. For the students themselves, however, the journey is frequently remembered as a continuous obstacle course, with many never reaching the end. Statistics underscore this reality, with studies suggesting that 33% to 70% of PhD students ultimately leave before completing their program. A recent paper in Frontiers of Psychology enlists the various factors that contribute to these outcomes, leading to notable differences across institutions and countries. The academic culture in the nation of study and more specifically the institution plays a significant role in determining the work environment. Additionally, the quality of mentorship, the complexity of the research project, and the stability of funding are all pivotal. Combined, these factors result in the fact that even for those who do complete their PhD, the process often takes much longer than anticipated.
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Voices of Academia 