3.24 Mental Health Challenges in Academia

In this episode of The Mindful Academy, I dive into the critical topic of mental health in academia, inspired by a recent Nature article that sheds light on the struggles PhD students face. Drawing on my experiences as a coach and former professor, I reflect on how systemic challenges—like financial pressures, isolation, competitiveness, and difficult supervisor relationships—can lead to anxiety, burnout, and depression. These challenges don’t just affect students; they ripple out, influencing academics at all career stages.

I also share some of my favorite strategies for maintaining mental health hygiene, including mindfulness, movement, connecting with a supportive community, and staying grounded in your personal values. Plus, I discuss the importance of seeking help through resources like employee assistance programs, coaching, and peer support. Whether you’re a graduate student, a postdoc, or an established academic, this episode is a reminder that your well-being matters—and that you’re not alone in facing these challenges.

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Transcript

Ep 3.24 Mental Health Challenges in Academia

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to the Mindful Academy. I'm Jennifer Askey, your host and coach, and thank you for lending me your ears today. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about mental health and academic work, prompted by an article in nature. com online on October 1st, the title of which was The Huge Toll of PhDs on Mental Health.

Data reveals stark effects. So this is a study out of Sweden that examined the rate at which PhD students in Sweden used or were prescribed psychiatric drugs. And I will link to this news article in the show notes. And this article has a whole menu of related articles about mental health. In graduate education and in [00:01:00] academic life in the sidebar that are probably worth looking at if you are interested in exploring this further.

But just a quick summary. So getting a PhD in the sciences and in the social sciences and in the arts and humanities takes its toll. And it is not so much the academic work itself that takes its toll, but things like moving across the country or across the planet. Moving to places where you don't have community, or support, or a common language, or, depending on where you move, access to health care access, or access to insurance.

things like that. The lack of community and support that can result either from frequent or big dislocations, like moving from place to place, and also although this didn't get a lot of attention in the article, [00:02:00] the fact that many graduate and professional programs are so competitive that they decentivize, disincentivize community formation among your cohort, right?

If you're all competing for the same thing, or it feels like you're all competing for the same thing, this is gonna, this is gonna deal a blow to camaraderie and so you may feel cut off from support. This also, this notion of support for me also brings up the ANIC data around the importance of a supportive supervisor and or supportive research group.

So students who find themselves in a situation where they don't have a supportive supervisor are at. enormous risk for mental health challenges that stem from the frustrations and and real effects of being stymied or not supported, or in some way having a really challenging relationship with the [00:03:00] supervisor who is supposed to help you get ahead in your career.

And then there's the time pressure, and financial pressure of getting a PhD or professional degree. So the rush to completion, I know that depending on the kind of program and university you're in, you could just have, four years of funding and then you have to be done. And during that time you have to tick off this number of boxes and jump through these sorts of hoops.

And if your process is experimental, right? If you're relying on acquiring new data, you might not have control over that. If you're relying on ethnographic or other studies involving people, IRBs all of these things create a lot of pressure around time to completion and the sense of rush and panic to get there paired with that is this notion of contingency.

You don't feel stable. And so these points about the hardships of being [00:04:00] in graduate or professional school as I was reading through the article in Nature, struck me that they don't really change dramatically when you're on the tenure track, or if you are on a research stream career path.

Because, You still may be subjected to huge international or cross national or transcontinental moves. You still feel contingent potentially until you get tenure. And then there is the cycle of funding every year that sort of reminds you of that. pressure or maybe it never goes away depending on what your field is and how that works.

So the picture that's being painted in this article that really resonated with me based on my work with academics who are both in the middle of all of this and with PIs who are leading labs that have postdocs and graduate students and junior faculty and research assistants in it who are all subject to these forces [00:05:00] in different ways is that You don't earn a ton of money, especially as an early career researcher, an early career academic.

So you are financially feeling precarious, and your job is, feels very high stakes. Your job of getting to degree completion, your job of securing the postdoc or the faculty line, your job of getting funding, of getting tenure, all of those things feel and are experienced as incredibly high stakes. And the payoff, that you get for achieving those things is usually not enough income to make all of those transitions smooth and to provide you with a ton of external help.

And when you have, so grab the so called brass ring, you are still in this position of high pressure and high stakes. for quite a while. And that amount of time spent in a high stakes environment [00:06:00] or feeling like you are in a high stakes environment, right? That undertone of threat or contingency or insecurity has real effects, right?

Is your cortisol elevated? How's your body coping with that? That cannot pass through your life. That can't be a phase of your life. That does not leave some sort of mark or And, so one of the things that the article brings up is mental health ABCs, right? The basics of mental health. And we know that some of the basics of mental health are adequate sleep, adequate nutrition, so balanced meals Preferably eaten in community every once in a while.

So not fast food, not eaten in your car, not eaten in your office consistently. Daily movement, not being chained to a desk, being able to get up and move around, to walk, to move your body, to [00:07:00] get vigorous exercise on occasion. More basics of mental health are to have community support, have a network of people, both professionally and personally, who have your back and who you can rely on so that you don't feel alone.

Other things that are connected to mental health basics are to really be in touch with Why? Why am I pursuing this? What is the value that my work addresses for me, like that inner motivation whether it's wonder or contribution to a better world or saving the planet or something that's really deeply felt that you can connect to on those days when the work feels like it's too much work for not enough reward.

And being connected to those values is an opportunity to be grounded in yourself. One of the [00:08:00] phenomenon that I notice a lot with my clients, and that I definitely experienced myself in that sort of grad school to visiting assistant professor to tenure track professor decade or more of my life, was the I was so focused on doing the next thing, hitting the next milestone achieving the next benchmark, that I didn't ever stop, and I wasn't ever invited to stop and explore who I wanted to be in all of that.

I was in awe of some of my graduate school professors and some of the other more senior members in my community. I was like, oh that's what success looks like. So I'm going to put my blinders on and just charge in that direction as quickly as I can. And that's what I did. That is not really getting grounded in yourself.

That is not giving yourself an opportunity to say, okay, I [00:09:00] want to be a researcher. I want to be a professor. What kind of professor do I want to be? How do I become that career wise in a way that is also authentic to my values and my skills and the kind of life I want to lead and the kind of family I want to have.

So grounding your pursuit of your research and scholarship in your lived experience and your life and your skills and your passions and your interests. One more mental health basic is being creative and intentional with your time, with your effort, with your projects, rather than just being reactionary.

Or reactive, right? Somebody snaps their fingers and you just jump without pausing and reflecting without checking in with your values, without checking in with your grounded embodied self and just spending your [00:10:00] time with your hair on fire, reacting to external impulses. And you hear me talk about that a fair amount on the podcast that being reactive is.

It's it's unsettling, it is, it's the opposite of creating an intentional career path or an intentional impact and it is it leads to a feeling of being out of control because you are just responding to external impulses as opposed to intentionally creating, whether it's your to do list or your entire project, right?

Within this Nature article and other research on mental health hygiene they recommend like 15 minutes a day at least of connecting, contemplating, getting grounded. And all of those words, like those are pretty basic words, everybody knows what they mean. [00:11:00] But getting connected to yourself and getting grounded, like it, I picture that as really with my spine straight and my feet planted and an aura of assuredness about me as opposed to limp and pliable and easily pulled off course and easily pulled into somebody else's agenda or drama or whatever.

So the ways to get that 15 minutes of grounded, centered contemplation are varied. Now, you will hear me talk a lot about meditation because that's what I love. My favorite ways to dip your toes in the water of meditation that are also free are two apps that you can get on your smartphone.

One is healthy minds. It's put out by the Institute for Healthy Minds at University of Wisconsin at Madison. It's a whole curriculum. And another app called [00:12:00] One Giant Mind that is a 12 day course and then a 30 day challenge in just a basic mantra meditation. Simple, maybe not easy because sitting is sometimes challenging, but both, but meditation and mindfulness are a way to get your brain and your heart and your body all in the same place and get grounded in you.

But there are other ways to do it and a really useful one, one that I also take advantage of all the time and I'm really glad that I am back in Edmonton. and have a dog again and can go walking under the trees and in the nearest ravine almost every day. So getting into nature, right? Smelling the earth, smelling the plants.

There's something about the air, the quality of stillness the atmosphere is healing for us. And so getting into nature and [00:13:00] contextualizing yourself, right? As a creature on a living planet. that is also very grounding. And another way to access it is, and you know how when you're in the shower in the morning and you're scrubbing your hair and you remember something or you get a great idea, this is because when we're doing repetitive actions that sort of absorb us, so like a shower is a full body experience or scrubbing dishes where you're really scrub, scrub the dirt off the dishes.

And you remember things and things occur to you. It is because when your body is occupied, your mind can go do its thing. And so repetitive absorbing motion is another way to keep yourself in one spot and let yourself reflect, right? If you picture being reactive as bouncy Helping your mental health is the opposite of bouncy.

It's solid, [00:14:00] right? And so meditation, time in nature, or repetitive absorbing motion, like jogging also, right? I love when I used to run. I would sink my breath to my footsteps and every run felt like a meditation because all I was focused on was the rhythm of my feet and my breath. And I And, after a good run or after a good yoga session, I joked that the house could burn down around my ears and I might not care because I'd gotten to that place where things were in perspective and context and I was not all tied up in my thoughts.

When you have that sense of groundedness and centeredness, it's from that moment on, mindset from that internal place that building community and finding connection is most possible and most authentic, right? The authentic you that forms community and connection is also the grounded centered you. So one thing [00:15:00] benefits the other.

Another thing to point out whether you are mentoring people who are in the early or contingent part of their career and you think they might be struggling or if you are in the contingent part of your career and you are struggling, whether you think it's burnout or depression or exhaustion or adrenal fatigue, whatever that may be there are things that you are likely able to access.

Okay. What is the available help around you? If you are classified as a university employee, Your university hopefully has an EAP, an Employee Assistance Program, or an EFAP, an Employee and Family Assistance Program. These frequently offer wellness benefits, therapy benefits, counseling benefits, that might not be absolutely everything in a bag of [00:16:00] chips, but will get you started.

Are there support groups? through your institution, through one of your professional organizations, one that you can tap into that maybe you can start up in terms of postdocs across the discipline or graduate students or early career researchers in your institution or discipline. Coaching is another thing that you might be able to access through your institution.

Or if you can hire a coach, somebody who can help you, Again, put things into perspective, get grounded, make some choices that align with your values, and offer you a bit of a sounding board and a mirror to see things maybe through a different set of eyes than you're seeing when you're feeling maybe panicked and rushed and under pressure.

So from therapy to employee assistance to support groups look around you and recognize that [00:17:00] if you are getting a PhD, or on a postdoc, or early in your academic career, and you feel like you are struggling, it is not you, okay? The system points us in that direction, leads us down that path, because the pressure is so high, and once you've hit the goal, you are rewarded with more pressure.

And living under constant pressure is actually not healthy for our minds. The reason I bring this up is first of all because it isn't you, it's the system. And I'm talking about people who are earlier in their career and that's maybe a fiction because I know plenty of tenured professors and full professors who will admit when nobody's except maybe their coach, I am not happy.

Now, not being happy isn't the same as mental health challenges or mental health crises, but [00:18:00] it points towards the fact that having the career you thought you wanted is not going to solve all of your problems. And as you are pursuing the career that you want you should not neglect your emotional and personal life.

It is not all work all the time to the exclusion of your heart and your mind and your body. Because the, and the habits that you establish in graduate school and in your postdoc early in your career, they tend to follow you throughout. I remember being in graduate school, which is where I met my husband.

And I got married when I was in graduate school, had my first child before I was done with my dissertation. And we had a colleague in graduate school who said, I'm going to put all of that on hold until I have tenure. So not just until the PhD is done, but until I have the job and have gotten tenure, like after tenure is when I can have a life.[00:19:00] 

And I don't know if that's what that colleague did, but. I've heard that story a few times. I need to wait until X happens and then I will be able to do Y. Whether it's, get married or have kids or buy a house or buy a car or go on vacation or whatever. But this notion that you have to earn your cookies, right?

You have to earn your rewards. The problem is if you spend years in go, not taking breaks, not allowing yourself to live a full and rounded life, but to be focused only on work, then when you hit that milestone, you don't have any patterns, any networks, any habits, any hobbies that are going to help you tap back into, Oh yeah once I get tenure, I'll be able to do all of these things.

You're out of practice. It's not on your mind anymore and you have a hard time tapping into that version of yourself because you [00:20:00] have not seen that version of yourself in years. So I haven't been a professor in eight years and I haven't been a university employee in three. I coach people every day almost and people who are in academia and I've immersed myself in the past seven years In learning about a new way of being that is more grounded and centered in me and my values and my authenticity.

And yet, I am still unlearning and dismantling some of my habits of work, habits of mind, physical habits that I took on as a graduate student, right? And so some of those are, are an inability to let go of work, an inability to just really unplug and not have that next project just simmering in the back of my mind [00:21:00] all the time.

Even if I'm off grid someplace, right? So really unplugging is occasionally a challenge for me. There's cynicism, hypercriticism. Those aren't great for relationship building. Those aren't great for network building, right? And yet they're part of the training in my discipline, right? Is to be very critical.

Yes, towards the texts, but it's hard to draw that line, right? And hypercriticism and cynicism I see in a lot of faculty, because they take that, or we take that mindset, where you're looking for the hole, looking for the flaw, and apply it broadly to everything they encounter. Deficit minded thinking, right?

Where is the the gap, where is the flaw? Whether that's about an idea, about a person, about a plan, about a bank account, right? Just looking for the negative. Is it does not build resilience to always be looking at the negative, right? And [00:22:00] mental health is also mental resilience. So these habits that I don't think were unique to my path through graduate school are habits that don't support mental health, they support anxiety, they support reactivity.

And so recognizing that, that maintain it, identifying implementing, maintaining. good mental health hygiene, regardless of where you are today, so that you aren't at some later point in your life going, Oh wow, how did I get to where I wanted to go? And then find myself miserable, right?

Maintaining perspective as opposed to being so absorbed in the work, in the theory, in the mindset of your research is important for your mental health. So some of the key words here that come up in research on resilience and emotional agility as the opposite of having a mental [00:23:00] health crisis is feeling resilient, feeling emotionally agile.

Words that come up there are optimism. So not Pollyanna, but when the fur hits the fan, can you Now, after a brief dip, return to an optimistic mode of thinking, right? Where you are focused on what is possible. Where you are focused on how things can work out, as opposed to constantly being focused on how things are going to go terribly wrong.

So optimism is good for your mental health. You are not your work. Making sure that your sense of identity has to do with those values and that grounded authentic version of you as much as it does about the work you churn out day in and day out, right? So you are more than your work, which means that your worthiness [00:24:00] is independent of the worthiness of your academic work.

You are a fabulous human being regardless of revise and resubmit or reject or failure or what have you. Because what happens in the world of academic publishing and hiring and retention is inside baseball, right? It's an industry set of practices and whatnot that are not universal. And so when we make academia our whole world, then something that feels like failure in academia feels like deep and profound personal failure when it isn't.

It's just oh, that didn't work out, right? And I know that sounds super simple to say, and it is not super simple to live, because I have lived that, right? Giving up a career, trying maybe to reestablish that professorial thing and realizing in a new country, in a new discipline, it was just not going to take off, [00:25:00] and feeling it all stripped away.

I had a hard time before I went through coaching, got coached, and then became a coach, like really understanding what it meant to be somebody independent of what I achieved and produced. So I acknowledge that's hard, but that is a key to good mental health hygiene while you are pursuing this high stakes career.

Because you and I, and all humans, have inherent worth and dignity. Your worth and your dignity and your value are not contingent upon that which you produce. And reading through this article in Nature, which of course, had some pictures that were sobering, and some graphs that were sobering, that

this is an industry that invites anxiety, [00:26:00] depression, contingent self worth, all of these things. And that's a huge shame because You go down this path because, okay, maybe you are interested in achievement, but you're also curious and passionate and want to use your mind and maybe you want to teach people, right?

There are all sorts of reasons for walking down the academic path. And I always say these should be the best jobs in the world and they should feel like the best jobs in the world. So if they aren't, pull back a little bit and look and say, okay, what is in my control to take care of me? as much as I'm taking care of the work, right?

And balancing you with achievement, outcome, production in a way that doesn't sacrifice you on the altar of producing or achieving on a regular basis. So the show notes will have the link to the Nature article, which also has links to further articles about [00:27:00] mental health in academia. And so if you're interested and if you just want to know what the range of studies around this look like, and what the range of experiences with mental health challenges in at least scientific academia looks like, I think this would be a great place to start.

And If you or someone you know is in crisis reach out, call that EAP hotline, right? Get in touch with somebody because there is no reason to be monkish and isolated and torture yourself. Even though that might be a model that looks doable. It's not. Thank you so much for lending me your ears this week.

I look forward to talking to you again soon, and I'm honestly interested in hearing from you. I have noticed in the past few weeks that my download numbers are going up, so there are a few more of you out there, and I would love to hear what resonates with you, [00:28:00] what you're interested in and start a real dialogue.

Because I talk to a lot of people and I want to share what I learn and what they're learning to a broader audience and I want to know what helps. Talk to you again soon. Take care.