Dr. A. Welsh, University of Pittsburgh

"Mental Health of Academics: How a High Pressure Environment and Lack of Guidance Leads to Higher Levels of Stress and Mental Health Concerns"

Abstract: Academia is known to be a high stress environment which is very demanding. Expectations of working round the clock or else researchers aren't dedicated enough cause a lot of students and faculty to be burnt out. On top of that, it is often very isolating, particularly for graduate students who do not have a support network yet. Lack of guidance or expectations in how PIs run research groups often leads to drastic differences in experiences for junior researchers, who may be unaware of the difference between the difficulties of conducting new research vs the effects of absentee or even toxic supervisors.

This high pressured and unstandardized environment to achieve excellence in academia and research leads to a broad range of mental health issues that are often not acknowledged. This affects minorities harder as they already struggle to fit within a system which is often biased against them. We will discuss some of these issues, the effects they have, and some small changes that may be able to improve the experiences for many junior researchers.