Ep24_SPECIAL 1YR ANNIVERSARY EPISODE - How To Change The System That Sets Us Up To Fail_Andrea Hayward.mp3

Ep24_SPECIAL 1YR ANNIVERSARY EPISODE - How To Change The System That Sets Us Up To Fail_Andrea Hayward.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Ep24_SPECIAL 1YR ANNIVERSARY EPISODE - How To Change The System That Sets Us Up To Fail_Andrea Hayward.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Emily:
Hey, there. A quick warning before we start today's episode briefly touches on bullying and abuse. Please be mindful if you continue to listen and reach out for support, if you need it.

Emily:
Ok, so this is a special episode for the one year anniversary of the podcast, so it'll be a little different. In addition to hearing about a personal academic mental health story, you'll also hear a discussion about the Cactus Global Academic Mental Health Survey results, including anonymous personal anecdotes. So interesting hearing how cactus communication started, how it evolved, and how it's become involved in the research on mental health space. You'll hear about that at the start of this episode. What makes the Cactus Mental Health Survey special is that it was incredibly representative of researchers in different geographical locations and stages of their career. I know what you might be thinking. Surveys and numbers aren't the reason you're here, but we discuss the personal mental health anecdotes of some of the 13000 global researchers that took part and how the data is being used to improve research culture. Andrea Haywood, a project manager for the Cactus Mental Health Initiative in Mumbai, India, also opens up about her experiences as a past master's student. Working on the survey made her reflect deeply about the way the academic system is structured and how she was made to feel like she was never good enough.

Andrea:
What I've learned just by speaking to researchers and by doing this kind of work, has helped me put my own experiences into perspective. There were so many challenges that I experienced at the time that I didn't have words for, I could say, or that I just thought were just, this is just how it is. This is just part of life, and it's just something I need to take in my stride. I realized that a lot of people, while they're in it and I know I've not done a phc, I stopped after a masters, but while you're in it, you don't realize that the things you are going through are not because it's a shortcoming or something that you're doing wrong. There's several things that are going on beneath the surface or behind the scenes that are making you feel a certain way and you don't realize that it's happening.

Emily:
This was a biiiiiig one, but listening back, I feel so validated in my frustration with the structure of academia. I love research, but academia is broken. Hearing some of these comments relating to fearing consequences of seeking support and not being able to make big life decisions because of job insecurity reinforced that this system needs to change to support the personal well-being of researchers and allow us to do our best work. How can we push the frontiers forward if we struggle to feel secure and supported? Welcome to Voices of Academia with Emily King. It's a podcast where researchers from around the world open up about their mental health. They might laugh, cry or say things you disagree with, but this has lived experience, not professional advice. We cover some sensitive material, but it's worth it to normalise difficult conversations, reduce stigma and help people feel less alone. Let's get into it. Hi, Andrea, welcome to the podcast.

Andrea:
Hi, Emily, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Emily:
It's my pleasure. So we met because you reached out to be a guest on the podcast. But also we've sort of had a lot of inadvertent kind of communication from various different projects that we've both been involved in. So we're both involved in the Mayans International Academic Mental Health Conference back in September of 2021, and I also participated in the Cactus Communications Video Series on mental health within academics, which I think was such a fantastic initiative. So I really want to thank you for putting that together.

Andrea:
Thank you for being being part of it.

Emily:
No, I loved it. It was, yeah, it was so great. And I mentioned in the intro that today will be a little bit different. So as well as sort of talking about some of your personal experience during your masters, we'll also be talking about this global survey on research and mental health that Cactus Communications has put together. So I thought maybe we'd start with getting you to tell our listeners what the purpose of Cactus Communications is like. Is it mainly focused on mental health, or are there a range of different projects that you undergo?

Andrea:
Sure. So thank you once again for having me here. I first, I came across you on Twitter. I realized that we had a ton in common in terms of how we think about mental health, and I decided at that time that we need to be better acquainted. And so I thought that if something comes up or if I'm planning something, I would definitely love to have you. And I think that's worked out great.

Emily:
Thank you.

Andrea:
Ok, so. I'll give you a little background into what Cactus does and how we got involved in the research on mental health space. So Cactus is a global technology company and we've been around for 19 years to all next year. We started out as an organization that was devoted to helping researchers overcome the language barrier in academic publication. And since then, we've gotten involved in several other things. We've been working with various stakeholders in the academic community to provide different kinds of solutions. And so because of the kind of work that we've been involved in, we've interacted with a lot of researchers, as you can imagine from across the globe. For these interactions, which mainly talked about publication and which mainly we were trying to provide solutions and help researchers reach their publication goals, we realized that there's a lot more going underneath which we didn't know much about, but we would have liked to know about. And so in order to give researchers, we also realized that there wasn't really a forum on which they could talk about certain things. We wanted to get to know researchers as people first, the people that we were talking to. We wanted to get to know them behind the science. And so my team and I at the time, we started a project called Researchers and their stories.

Andrea:
And it was just about the stories. We wanted researchers to come forward and talk about who they are, what they do and what life is like for them within academia. And it was a fantastic project. We ended up collecting about 450 stories or more and it's still going on. And fortunately, I couldn't walk on it anymore, but it was great. So we had topics like a day in the life of a PhD student. What goes on in the day? We had stories of success, stories of failure. We had the inspiration behind the research. What led you to actually pursue research as a career? There were a lot of motivational inspirational stories, but there were an equal amount of. Very alarming stories and topics like depression and impostor feelings and anxiety and burnout, and just so many of these words which scared us, it led us to wonder how many more researchers were going through something like this, whether they had a safe space in which they could talk about it. And we realized that not many do, because a lot of the people who shared their stories and experiences with us, they actually said, Thank you. No one's ever asked me about this. And that was just so heartbreaking to hear that we started wondering if there was something more we could do because we did have these channels of communication with so many researchers, especially in Southeast Asian countries like China, Japan, South Korea.

Andrea:
So mental health is even more taboo. That is what I can say from personal experience. That's how the first conversations of a global survey came forward. And we wanted to give researchers a space or rather a forum in which they could talk about these pressures, talk about these stressors and challenges that they were experiencing. And we wanted it to not be via their university, but there could be consequences for them. Of the thirteen thousand researchers who took the survey, I think a very small portion offered up their names. It was completely up to them. So I think over 70 percent of the survey anonymously, which is what we wanted for them. We wanted them to feel safe and we wanted them to not feel like the information that they were giving us, or that the fact that they were pouring out their hearts to us couldn't be used against them. And so that's how the survey came about and boasts that we started thinking that there's so much more we can do now that we have all of this data. We don't want to just keep it to ourselves.

Andrea:
You want to share it. We want people to become aware of what we know. And so that's how it became the Cactus Mental Health Initiative, and we didn't want it to be a one time thing. You are completely against that, which is why there have been so many different activities and initiatives that have come out from this survey, like the Twitter handle that we have or the webinar series that we've been doing. And several other things which will be coming up soon. The video series, like you said. So we decided that one day in the year is not enough to talk about mental health. And so we want to talk about it all through the year and keep that conversation going. And so everything that we've done since launching the survey has been devoted towards that and the two reports that we put out. We've been trying to get it across to more universities and people who are in a decision making position in academia. And we're hoping that some of these statistics, some of these suggestions would prompt them to take the kind of action that needs to be taken in order to support researchers better or at least if not support them, ask them what they need.

Emily:
Yeah, that was such a great introduction to what you do and sort of how this all came about because I wasn't aware of parts of that story. And I did make me wonder actually whether that life in a race as a research, a series is freely available online at all? Or was that? Yes. So we might get I might get the details of that, and I'll add it into the episode description. If people would like to go have a look at that because I think that could be of interest to our listeners, too. But yeah, definitely. Voices Macadamia and the Cactus Mental Health Initiative do seem to be so closely aligned, and it's so great to have multiple different initiatives that are sort of popping up now that are focusing on this because it really did kind of give me goose bumps. When you said that a lot of people that took that survey thanked you and said, Yeah, no one's ever asked me about this because I do feel and I think I've said this on the podcast before, but often us as people doesn't really get taken into account within academia, and I don't know what it's like for researchers within other industries. So within government or within, you know, the pharmaceutical industry, for example. But yeah, the fact that that that sort of happened just, yeah, indicates how important initiatives like this are. So you mentioned that, yeah, it was a survey of 13000 researchers. So could you tell us just briefly a little bit more about how that survey was conducted? Sure.

Andrea:
I won't get into what the survey structure was like, but I will get into the fact that we were sure from the start that we didn't want to do this by ourselves. Yes, we had the resources. Yes, we had the platform, but we wanted researchers to be involved right from the start. So even at the question framing stage, we did have a set of collaborators and advisors who were researchers who were mental health advocates in the space. And so they were constantly telling us what we could do better if there was something that we absolutely shouldn't do. And so they've helped us throughout this journey, and we're very grateful to them. We also ended up partnering with different companies like Dragonfly Mental Health, for instance, who who was also very they were very insightful in terms of how we can take it forward or what else we can do, or how best we can present the data that we had collected. It was through these partnerships that we formed and through our own communication channels that we already had with researchers across the globe that we were able to put the word out and really get people to take an interest in something like this and take the survey. And I always make it a point to do a shout out to the researchers who did take the survey because it was a 10 minute long survey. And some of the questions are not they're not easy to answer. So I really want to do a shout out to them. And I think what makes this survey really special is its representation. There are a lot of other surveys that have given very insightful data, like the Nature Survey, for instance. But a lot of these surveys, they tend to focus on either one group of people, for instance, just Ph.D.

Andrea:
students or just people in the UK or just people in the U.S. And that's not bad. That's great because it is giving us it is giving us data and insight that we need. But I feel like we really got to hear from the Southeast Asian Community Researcher community this time through this survey. And I don't think that they even discussed things like mental health or things like stress and burn out there. So for them to really come up and give us some of what's happening there was fantastic. And we also got really great representation from people at different stages in their careers. So we had PhD students, we had professors, we had postdocs, we had people identifying themselves as lecturers or masters students. The diversity and the representation of the data has helped us dig deeper. And so now we can we can check variations in data like, for instance, which are the countries in which people are feeling most overwhelmed or which are the countries in which people are least satisfied with, say, things like work life balance or their financial situation, or how much sleep they're getting. So those kind of things have been really interesting to see. I would encourage people listening to this podcast to take a look at the survey. It's very difficult to cover all of it in a single conversation, but there's so much to read. I'm not saying this just because I worked on it. It's a great read and it's worth your while. And really? It really direct your attention to things that you might not have known about the academic community across the globe, so I would really recommend that everyone reads it.

Emily:
Yeah, and I'll definitely put a link in the episode description for that as well. That is online and freely available to anyone that would like to have a look at it. And I guess because we haven't got into it yet, we will get into it in a bit more detail in a minute. But just to highlight that it attempted to understand aspects of work that bring researchers joy, but also what aspects cause them stress and what research institutions can do to create a more supportive and nurturing research culture. So that's just kind of a brief summary of what you would find in there. And yeah, the fact that you brought up the diversity of responses you got is something that I wanted to touch on as well, because I'm not a mental health researcher, but I understand that there's less research on researchers at the postdoc level and higher. And what is available sort of focuses quite strongly on burnout and stress. So there's less of those sort of other details that were covered in this particular survey. And yeah, I know that there's a lack of sort of diversity in the profiles in the research as well. So it seems like with my limited knowledge, but it seems like this was a really significant contribution to the field. So, yeah, I highly recommend giving this a read as well. It'll be a really great starting point, I think, for institutions to start to implement some of these suggestions and try to overcome some of the areas that are of particular difficulty for researchers and their wellbeing, which obviously impacts productivity. So I'm interested to know why you would like to share this today, Andrea. So I know obviously the survey has kind of been your your baby a little bit, and it's very important to you. But you will also be sharing a little bit about your personal experience during your masters as well. So would you mind sharing, you know, why you wanted to come forward today?

Andrea:
So I come from an educational background in psychology. I had a bachelor's in psychology and then I did a master's in industrial psychology. And somewhere along the way, I feel like I lost touch with that part of myself because I didn't continue in the academic space. Post my master's, I started working with Cactus. But then so when the researchers and their stories project started coming up and I suddenly got involved in the mental health space, it felt like I was coming home. It felt like I was coming full circle and that I was finally rekindling that spark with something I was really passionate about. And the time that I've spent working in the academic mental health space has made me reflect on my own master's journey and identify things that I was experiencing that I didn't know at the time. For instance, I had no idea I was. I was experiencing severe imposter feelings for the entire two years of my master's and. What I've learned just by speaking to researchers and by doing this kind of book has helped me put my own experiences into perspective for which I'm really grateful. There were so many challenges that I experienced at the time that I didn't have words for, I could say, or that I just thought were just, this is just how it is.

Andrea:
This is just part of part of life, and it's just something I need to take in my stride, which is why I felt like when I first found out about the Voices of Academia podcast, I wanted to talk and be part of it somehow because I realized that a lot of people, while they're in it and I know I've not done a Ph.D., I stopped after the Masters. But while you're in it, you don't realize that the things you are going through are not because it's a shortcoming or something that you're doing wrong. There's several things that are going on beneath the surface or behind the scenes that are making you feel a certain way and you don't realize that it's happening. So I felt that if I could, now putting my experiences into perspective help someone realize that, and that would be great. Even if this resonates with one person, that's going to make me really happy and I'll feel like I've done my bit.

Emily:
Thanks so much for being willing to share as well, because I know it wasn't really part of your initial plan. And when you came forward to me, you know, with this idea of sharing some of the details of this survey, I was definitely really interested to do that. But I also wanted to, I guess, keep in line with what we're about to, which is about sharing the personal stories. So I think this is going to be a really interesting kind of combination of those two things. So I guess for the listeners just to kind of signpost a little bit of what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about some of the key topics that were brought up in this survey, such as work related pressures experienced by researchers, work life balance and personal well-being of researchers feeling valued, safe and included in academia, research, culture and mental health. Surprise seeking help and support in academia. And we'll finish up with some positive suggestions that came out of the survey on how to improve the culture and the industry. So obviously that's a lot to cover. And, you know, it'll sort of really only give a brief snapshot of what is available for you to go and have a look at within that survey. And the full report, as I mentioned, is freely available online for you to download and there'll be a link in the episode description. So I know you said, Andrea, before recording that and you've just sort of brought it up a little bit now. But you you didn't really realize at the time that you were struggling with feelings of imposter syndrome during your masters and you were dealing with extreme stress and burnout because you needed to balance a full time masters with a day job. And that was a mandatory requirement of your particular degree. Yes. You didn't receive any support or accommodation for bouncing classes, coursework, working on your master's thesis and showing up for work, let alone balancing other aspects of your life. So I I kind of wanted to ask you. So it was your master's in India first off?

Andrea:
Yes, it was. So I it wasn't much of a break between my bachelor's and my masters, so it really felt like I was just jumping from one lane and another pretty quickly. So I didn't really have that the time to just transition. And then when you enter your master's, it's a whole new thing. I did things which I hadn't done before for the first time in a larger quantity. So there was just reading papers, reading research papers, just diving into literature and just accessing journals for the first time in my life, which you hadn't really done at a bachelor's level because we were textbook oriented at that time, and I remember feeling so lost. But it seemed the kind of kind of instruction I was getting from staff, it seemed like this is something you should already know. Why do you not know this? And if you don't, then OK, please rise to the occasion and figure it out. And I remember feeling like, OK, how do I do this? And I feel like all of my peers around me were equally confused. No one really knew what was happening or what we were expected to do. And so I constantly felt like I was failing, and there wasn't really anyone to reassure me and tell me that this is all part of the learning process and it's OK and that it would take time. Instead, it was like there were these things that I needed to know, which were pegged as things that you should have done by now, or things that you should have mastered by now.

Andrea:
But there was no instruction in how to do them. So I remember we had so I did a master's in industrial psychology. So we had we had lab work. We had to work on these experiments. We done a little bit of that during my bachelor's, but we were talking to participants for people, right? There wasn't much instruction on how to conduct ourselves or how to be around these people, and they were giving us so much time of their lives, right? I remember feeling. Just stressed and overwhelmed by everything that I was experiencing at the time because it was also new and it was so much and it was a new environment for me, I had switched. I was not at the same university, but I had switched colleges, so that was new for me. It was it was a ton of new faces. It was a ton of new professors and new curriculum. And I feel like the first semester just went by as a blur with me not knowing what to do. And I remember there was. It felt like a sea of failure, to be honest, because it didn't seem like anyone was succeeding, and I know that if at all in it together, then it seems a little more comforting, but it really wasn't. It felt like. We want men to succeed. It felt like the curriculum or what we were studying, which is designed to make us fail, even if we did succeed, we were barely getting by.

Andrea:
And I love psychology as a subject. I love reading about it, but I suddenly felt like I was losing touch with that aspect because I was so I was so caught up on just doing assignments and and attending classes and trying to make sense of what was happening. So I feel like I stopped loving the subject a little bit because I was. Trying to deal with all of this at the same time during my first year. And things got more complicated in the second year, because, like you mentioned, the curriculum required us to do a sort of internship. And I remember getting like securing this internship and we were still required to maintain pristine attendance. I don't know if this is a thing with universities and other countries here in Mumbai, India. It's it's a very big deal and you need to maintain a certain percentage of attendance. And if you don't, then that's going to reflect on your grade or it's going to reflect on whether or not you clear that particular semester or your. And I remember that we had classes at really strange hours, so it would be like a like for an hour in the morning around seven a.m. And then there would be this huge gap and suddenly we'd have a class at 12 p.m. and then another one at five p.m.. And so I was confused about when do I go to work? When am I supposed to go to work? And I remember.

Andrea:
So it was a situation in which if I was missing class, it was on me. And it was a choice that I was making to go to work, even though I would have ideally not taken up a job at the same time because it didn't make sense. And when do you work? I was lucky that I interned at Cactus and they had a very flexible schedule. And so the people who I was working with at the time, they sort of figured this out with me around my class schedule, and I was able to like, go in on a Saturday or go in really early or sometime in the afternoon. But I remember just standing up after class one day and getting ready to leave for work, and the professor asked me where I was going and I said, I'm going to work because now I have this job and I can't not like, I can't just go. And I feel like there is some amount of flexibility, but I can just not show up, right? And this is what you wanted me to do. So I'm doing it. And so I remember her being really annoyed at me for saying that. And she said, this is something you should have thought of before. You should have figured it out. So I just couldn't understand how I was supposed to manage both. I was lucky that my college and workplace were not that far away from each other, but just guarding myself to and fro.

Andrea:
So there would be days when I would start at college, attend a few classes, head to work, work for a couple hours, head back for some evening classes. And I was just all over the place and I would spend, at least for maybe three hours in transit every day. And if anyone's traveled in Mumbai, you know that you cannot do any reading or be productive while you're in transit because it's just too noisy or it's just too crowded. And it's not. It's not like you can hold this really thick book or any paper in your hand and do a little bit of reading. So I had to wait until I got home and then complete assignments. If I had work left over, I have to do that. And I reached the point where it just all got too much and I didn't know. I didn't know what I should prioritize because I was loving the work that I was doing. I was learning new things every day, and I just couldn't understand how I had ended up in this position, which was designed by the curriculum and how there was no sort of support that I could ask for. So it seemed like I had to just figure things out by myself. There was no accommodation or support. And I remember we had these really strict deadlines for things like assignments or things like papers or just submissions that we had to put in.

Andrea:
It was very clear that if you don't send the same to us at this particular date. Then you have failed this or it's going to be some sort of deduction or consequences for you. And I remember once explaining, when do I do this? And it wasn't really taken seriously, it seemed, as I was made to feel like I was maybe goofing off or not planning my day well enough or I was wrong. Things like maybe you should not devote so much time to your social life. It's like, I don't have one. I don't know what social life you're talking about, but it just seemed like I was either walking or I was studying what I was attending classes or I was in transit all the time. And I remember not seeing much of my family at the time, even though I lived with them technically. But yeah, it was. And I couldn't really explain it to them either, because it was the first time that someone in my family was doing something like this wherein it was a work and still still show up to class sort of situation. To them, it just seemed like I was never available. I was always busy. If we had to do something on the weekend, I couldn't because I was either at work because I had to make up for the time. I couldn't spend there during the week or I was working on an assignment or I was working on a submission for the following Monday.

Andrea:
So I remember this impacting probably every aspect of my life at the time I was, I was tired all the time. I was barely sleeping because I had to reach somewhere at seven a.m. and it impacted my head for sure because it felt like there was no time to eat meals on time. Or I was I was eating lunch at a different time every day, sometimes skipping lunch because I had to get from one place to another during lunch time. And it just I started feeling very stressed and overwhelmed. It felt like I was crossing a threshold of just being exhausted all the time. And so usually you sleep or you rest over a weekend and then you're all fresh on a Monday morning. And it just felt like that wasn't happening for me anymore. I was just taking last week's exhaustion into the next week and then the next and then the next. And so I ended up having to take a break from work just so I could cram for some examinations that were coming. So woke was really accommodating and they were like, OK, you can take a break. And then if you want, you can come back after you've written your exams. I remember I just had like maybe a couple of weeks to study for anyone who knows what don't paper is an evaluation criteria is like in an Indian university. It's it's not the best. It could be doing a lot more to improve the situation.

Andrea:
And it seemed more than the knowledge that I gained or me being able to apply what I had learned. It seemed like my speed of writing was being tested. I clearly remember that, and a lot of my peers at the time were also having trouble keeping up because it seemed like they wanted these. Effect answers and I have never been able to do rote learning. It's not something, it's not how I operate. And so we would expect it to just absorb a ton of information and just vomit it out on a paper and do us, which wasn't possible because you can just read a question and start writing. You have to like, think about it, and some sort of assimilation has to happen in your mind right before you can actually do that. And so I remember being thoroughly disappointed. I felt like the evaluation system or just how we were being tested was extremely negligent. And I remember reaching a point where I decided that I couldn't win. And so I should just stop trying to beat a system that was designed to just make me fail or make me feel bad about myself. And so I think this was somewhere around the fourth term, but I just decided I'm just going to give it how much I can. And we'll see where it goes. It all ended well. Of course I did clear my master's. I passed my exam. I was able to go back to work. But looking back, it didn't seem worth it.

Andrea:
It didn't seem like that is how I would have wanted to spend those two years, I would have rather spend my time connecting with the material, connecting with the professors. It's not like I had all my professors, and so I would point that out. I'm still in touch with one or two professors who really had an impact on me very positively and. But the others, I feel like they could have done things better for sure. I don't remember any of them just offering a channel of support in which we could just talk about what we were going through. I was just talking to my friends who were also experiencing the same thing, the people who are in class with me. And they had their own set of challenges. And then I had my own set of challenges. And I didn't really feel like we had the answers because we were all just so confused and stressed at the time. I feel like, especially because I was doing a degree in psychology, I felt like if there was a sort of support person at the university who had made themselves available to talk these things through or say if we needed extra tutoring or if we needed a mentor of sorts, some instruction or some training towards the beginning would have been great. I was really big on fear of failure by myself. Mm-hmm. And I felt like this whole situation just aggravated that to a very high level.

Andrea:
Because while there was no instruction or training, they were very quick to shoot something down is wrong or incorrect, or this is not how it's done. And I remember thinking, but you didn't tell me how to do it in the first place. So how is this wrong? I've done it my way because that's what you asked me to. I just remember being just frustrated and stressed and bitter after a period of time because I like to do things well. I like to do things to the best of my ability. And then I want the results to reflect the amount of effort I've put in. But that was just not happening. I reached a stage where it just felt like I was giving and giving all of myself, but I wasn't really receiving any sort of. There was no, you could say success. There was no breakthrough. This whole experience just distanced me from both the subject that I was studying and. I remember thinking I never want to do this again. That was I was very clear about that, but I don't want to be in this kind of an educational set up ever again. Something big has to happen or something drastically has to change if I ever if I think that I never want to do something like this again. So I think while I was in my bachelor's, the thought of doing a PhD had crossed my mind at some point. I just thought that would be fun to be

Emily:
To have

Andrea:
That. Dr. Haywood, I and we would joke about it, but I feel like my master's. If there's one thing that I did for sure, it just it scared me from even even pursuing thoughts like these. I don't think I've ever fully gotten over that fear. So I don't know if I'd want to pursue one later in life. But yeah, I definitely remember not ever wanting to do something like that again.

Emily:
Yeah, and I feel like everything you said just then is so relatable, and there's so much I'd really want to say, but I'll keep it to a couple of points and then we'll sort of move on just because of time. But it's so sad. I guess, first of all, to think that doing your master's scared scared you away from academia because logically education should really be inspiring us, inspiring us to take the next step to make innovations, you know, to engage the next generation. So many things. But it's just, oh, it's just so incredibly sad that it actually took you in the other direction. But going back to some of what you said earlier, so just feeling like you never really knew how to do things and you weren't really taught how to do things. I I saw this tweet the other day that was sort of a PhD student saying, Oh, I don't know what I'm doing. And then like a postdoc replying and being like, Oh, PhD, I don't know what I'm doing. And it was kind of funny because yesterday I asked one of the postdocs in my office how to do something, and I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. And he was like, I also don't know what I'm doing. And I was like, Oh my God, we just recreated a Mame. And it's it's funny, but like, it's also so incredibly hard because like, that is the way it is. Like, we're just kind of muddling around, trying to work it out.

Emily:
Like, I feel that's so deeply and I'd love to hear from anyone that has a different experience. But like just that feeling lack, you know, sort of taught how. But then when you do do things, you're told that it's wrong. And also, in my case, I have asked how to do things sometimes or I have been proactive and been teaching myself how to do things and then being discouraged from doing that. And it's just it's just so many mixed messages. The attendance requirements, I guess I just want to clarify we do have attendance requirements in Australia, but we don't have this requirement to, as far as I'm aware to juggle a master's or a PhD with an internship. So I was quite surprised to find out about that, although I think in America they do have to do something similar. So I guess that's just the different, you know, international standards. But yeah, it sounds like you were really lucky to actually do that with cactus and to have some flexibility from them. And I have no doubt that's possibly why you have ended up working for them now. It sounds like a really supportive organisation, but yeah, the other two points that just kind of really spoke to me were this culture of having to overwork in so many different areas, but that's still not being good enough. Like, you know, actually being told like, no, like, you need to sort this out. You should have thought about this. And it's like. But.

Andrea:
Exactly.

Emily:
And the spate of work, rather than understanding being important, I just that one really spoke to me as well because literally yesterday I had a deadline and I just I luckily, I don't currently work Fridays. So I said to you before recording that I've been like such a potato today, but I needed that because I felt like I was having to make my brain work at a speed that it doesn't naturally work out so that I could take in all this information. Like I was literally trying to learn something new yesterday. Do the associated analysis and then present it like all in one day for two different things, as well as the other aspects of this report that I was doing. And it's just like like, it just needed to be done, and that was what was kind of like expected. And it does. It makes me feel bad because then I'm like, Oh, I can't. I'm not cut out for this. I can't do it fast enough. I get so tired by this. Like, I literally need a whole day break, like I was legit on the couch all day.

Emily:
Like, I watch Netflix and I played video games like I was a potato because I couldn't make any decisions today after just this week. And I'm in a really lucky position where I currently work part time so I can rest and I can recover, and I'll need to do this again next week for another deadline that I have. But you know, I'm in a lucky position because I can recover, and I know so many people don't have that. So yeah, again, I can just relate to so much of what you just brought up, but I'd really like to go into. So obviously, that's your experience. That's a little bit of my experience, but I'd really like to go into sort of what came up in the survey in terms of some of the work pressures in terms of work life balance and in terms of getting. Support within academia, so we might do that after a break. So, yeah, what what sort of came up in in the survey in relation to work related pressures? Work-life Balance and getting support within academia,

Andrea:
Like you mentioned at the start, it's difficult to get into all of them. So I'll just pick out a few key ones in terms of just work related pressures. First, we had about two thirds of our entire sample saying that they were under tremendous pressure to publish papers, secure grants and complete projects. That's around sixty five percent or thirteen thousand people saying that. I think that really it didn't come as a surprise, unfortunately, but it was very alarming to see the numbers coming across across geographies, across levels in academia. There was also about forty four percent feeling that they didn't have sufficient or high quality resources to get the job done that they were meant to be doing. And the reason I picked this is because it reminded me of my own experience wherein there were these very high expectations of what I was supposed to get to the table. But then there were no resources, there was no support, there was no backing that I was getting in order to do that. Another one that I wanted to talk about is that I think almost half that's around forty five or forty six percent of our global sample, how the research performance was being evaluated in their organization. They indicated that it was very unfair. I realized that we didn't dig deep into what kind of unfair practices were happening here.

Andrea:
But...

Emily:
That was going to be my next question.

Andrea:
Yeah, yeah. So do you even have a follow up question for this? But the statement was, I think it's unfair how research performance is evaluated in my organization and the fact that half of the respondents agreed to that or strongly agreed to that. I think that is definitely alarming.

Emily:
Hmm. I can, I guess, from just to just from my perspective on that. And again, like if anyone that's listening would like to contribute to this on Twitter, I'd be really interested. But I think like I would be assuming that that would be the whole publish or perish culture and the fact that we really only seem to be measured on often even just the number of publications, not even necessarily the quality and things like, you know, things like being on committees and teaching and other scientific outreach are kind of acknowledged like, I think they're helpful for some grant applications. But at the end of the day, they're not the things that are going to get you funding. At the end of the day, it really is just the publications that seem to matter. So doing all of this extra stuff that you might be super interested in, you might have a lot of skills in. It might be really helping the next generation, you know, so many positive steps for academia as a whole. It's really. Kind of at your own expense to do that, because it can take away from the time that you need to generate data that you need for your publications, that you need for your funding. So from my perspective, that's what that would be about. But yeah, it would be really interesting if Cactus ever ends up doing some form of follow up survey to see what the global community says in response to the reasons for that.

Andrea:
Yeah, I know there's one in the plan. I just don't know when, but I think there's one in the plan for sure. One set apart, publish or perish. I just want to go back to that. So we had like about five thousand open ended comments that came in or more. And a lot of them spoke about this being under this pressure to publish and it brought out the whole publish or perish thing. I think a lot of people also said that just the number of hours or how much work they were expected to put in in order to succeed was way more than they'd signed on for. Or then they will be compensated for it. And I think that also it really ties into this work related pressure of just being expected to always be working. There will be people who say like, Oh, but you should take a break and I'm just jumping into the Work-Life Balance findings. And we actually had someone say in the comments that if you are telling people to have a rest day or you're encouraging them to try and balance their working lives, then mean what you say, you can't be telling people to take time off or, you know, manage their day better. What you're doing nothing to improve their workloads or talk about what they should be prioritizing or when they apply for leave. Suddenly, it's not the same anymore. You go back on your word. So I think that it's not exactly work related pressure, but I think it's somewhere that it ties into all of this as well. Definitely not a couple of things that I want one to say in terms of Work-Life Balance, which were particularly alarming for me. We had about a little less than 50 percent of the respondents saying that they didn't have the time for things like hobbies, recreation or social life or spending time with their family.

Andrea:
And it seems like a small number. But then when you think of the scale of the survey, it's very, very alarming and it becomes way more serious when you read some of the comments. I recall this one comment, which said that it's not about free time, it's about a lack of free energy. And it actually questioned who can do hobbies, who can do recreational activities, who can just have fun when you're emotionally, physically, mentally exhausted all the time. So I think that is something that I would really want to bring up, and it ties back to what I also said about taking last week's exhaustion into the next and then the next and never really getting a break. And even if you do get a break, then there's that constant guilt that you're not doing enough or you're losing out on time or someone else is going to do it if you don't do it. So I think that is where it ties into work related pressures, even though it's not directly what's happening at work, I think it ties into that as well. And another thing that I wanted to highlight from the survey is that around forty three percent again, they indicated that their organization didn't have any policies or facilities around Work-Life Balance, and there was just eight percent who agreed that their organization did so. It made me wonder about whether there's no conversation or this little conversation in these other organizations around Work-Life Balance, or if it's just not, it's just not up for conversation than yeah,

Emily:
If I can weigh in on that one? I guess we get sort of encouraged, certainly as PhD students, to sort of do things outside of work and make sure that you have something other than your research, but it comes back to that point of, yeah... Your workload isn't sort of reduced or negotiated to an acceptable level to allow you to sort of undertake those activities outside. So if you do choose to do them, it's on top of overworking already or on top of largely unmanageable workload. And in terms of, I guess, like work hours, I don't really recall ever having a conversation with anyone about what the work hours of a researcher is. I work in biochemistry and molecular biology, so I'm in the lab. So for our industry, you know, it really depends on the cells and the animals and what they need and what time of the day they need it and what day of the week they need it. And if they need it on a public holiday, they need it on a public holiday like it's just it is what it is like. You're kind of at the mercy of biology. And so that's just an expectation. And you can, you know, to a degree. Organize your schedule so that maybe at certain times you have more of that and then you get a bit of a break from that, and you might be focusing more on data analysis or something, for example. But I also know people that have had multiple animal studies running concurrently for six to nine months of this year. So, yeah, I really don't recall much of a conversation. And if there is one, it's kind of like, yeah, Work-Life Balance is important. Crickets like it's important you should definitely do it, but also you have these deadlines and all of these overlapping experiments. So definitely a challenge.

Andrea:
Yeah. I also want to bring up the fact that this responsibility of just dealing with the stress or just powering through and figuring it out. I feel like the responsibility is just on the researcher, but on the PhD student or on the postdoc or on the professor and the role of academia is playing in creating these stressors. No one's really talking about that. And the reason I brought this up is because we just spoke about this. I was telling you, I did a webinar yesterday and we were talking about how stress can be managed at different levels. Of course, there's certain things that you can do to take better care of yourself. But then if you have to go back and do a toxic environment where no one else is worried about you or how you're taking care of yourself, then there's only so much you can do. And so we were talking about at the group level or at the lab level, what can be done to alleviate these stressors or at the institutional level? What can the institution do to make it such that you're not so stressed in the first place? Can we have better hours? Can we manage workloads better? Can we have support channels? And we were just talking about how it's not just the researchers responsibility to manage stress or to deal with it, because there is a lot of systemic issues that are contributing to the stress in the first place?

Emily:
Yeah. And I'm actually really glad that you brought that up because I'm wary that we're sort of talking about all the negative parts of academia. And there are definitely so many positives as well, which is why I know in this survey, but also in some of the talks that Cactus has given. You also focus on what drew researchers in why they started to do their research and what they love about it too. Because for me personally, I know I actually really love research and there's a lot of aspects of my PhD that I really enjoy. But it's the industry that kind of gets in the way. If the industry didn't have as many of the flaws that it does, then I would be so much happier and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case for a lot of other people. But yeah, I'm interested to know what what sort of came out of that in terms of what can institutions do to help reduce some of these work pressures and help to improve and encourage work-life balance?

Andrea:
Right. So I'm glad you brought up the fact that it was all not bad in the survey, which is why we call it joint stress triggers. We wanted to know, despite all of this that's happening is a large part of the research. Community keeps going. And so we wanted to figure out what is it that keeps them going? And for those who are interested, you'll find some of this in the report and you can take a look at it. So about your question, Emily, in terms of what institutions can really do. So I'll just give you some context here that the suggestions that came out from this survey, they came from the researchers who participated. So we did a sort of qualitative analysis on the open ended comments that they shared. And the question asked was What do you think decision makers in academia can do better? What what can they do to create a better research culture, a more nurturing environment? And some of the themes that came out, I'm just going to go through them quickly. One of the themes that came out was implementing measures to promote equality and preventing behaviors like bullying, harassment and discrimination in academia. That is something that definitely came out strongly. And it's really heartbreaking because the comments weren't even asking for things like better reporting procedures or something like a policy.

Andrea:
I remember one comment just said, Take people seriously what you think is just kidding or just joking around someone else. My view very differently. And so if someone is coming to you and saying that I'm feeling bullied or I'm feeling harassed as a university or as an official at the university or as a supervisor, the least you can do is believe the person because no one's going to make something like this up. Of course, we need to have better policies and procedures in place, but I just wanted to give you a sense of the kind of comments that came through in the survey. There is another comment that I would want to highlight here. It's a street harassment and bullying with the same degree of seriousness as plagiarism and data fabrication. It was encouraging universities to look at bullying and harassment and discrimination as research misconduct, because that's what it is, right? So I feel like this thing of just acknowledging that this is happening and that something needs to be done about it came across really strongly in our open ended comments in terms of just providing support or things like counseling services or support channels, and just normalizing the conversation around mental health in academia that came out really strongly.

Andrea:
And some of the suggestions were that universities can suggest in the first place that you may at times feel lost, you might feel overwhelmed. And there's no shame in saying so. You don't have to feel like it'll make you less of a scientist, or it would make you less competent or capable. The fact that that's not already happening and people were asking for that was so heartbreaking. And in terms of asking for support, a lot of people said that the reason they weren't asking for support was because they didn't think that they would be taken seriously or even if they would be heard out. No one would be able to help. It's sort of speaking to a lack of support channels or services within the university that could help them. And a lot of people said that there's a need for confidential spaces within a university or at least supported access to these spaces or services. So it's not like you can expect your supervisor to have an answer to everything. You would expect them to be equipped or just adept to deal with something like this. But at least they should have some sort of basic knowledge on where they can direct you to and where you can go if you're experiencing mental health issues or if you're living with mental illness.

Andrea:
I feel like there is this stigma around talking to people with people who have mental health issues or mental illness because people are worried that they'll have to make accommodations for them. And I just don't get that. I think it's ridiculous that that would be the line of thinking you would want to support them. You would want to ask them how you can make their work lives easier and better. I saw that coming through as well and some of the comments wherein people were asking for an in-house counselor or at least supported access to a counselor so that they didn't have to. They didn't have to go out and look for it themselves because mental health care like this is fairly expensive, right? And so a lot of people were very clear that they wanted mental health support at the university to be completely different from their supervisor or from the people that they were working with. They were very clear that they didn't want to speak to their supervisor about it directly, and they wanted they wanted a person who was removed from the situation to be providing them with the kind of support that they needed.

Emily:
Yeah, I guess I have. Yeah, quite a bit to say about that as well. So that kind of takes us into the realm of feeling supported and valued, safe and included within academia. And I guess we might touch a little bit on if there were any sort of personal anecdotes around that in a minute. But was there anything that sort of specifically came out in suggestions for improvements that related to reducing work related pressures or improving work-life balance?

Andrea:
Yes, I think I'd want to highlight two here. One was definitely ensuring job security and adequate funding for researchers. I think that came as one of the top five. In fact, one of the top three leading people were saying that don't expect me to work full time and a half position in terms of job security. There was a lot of concern about our fixed term contracts and the kind of toll that that takes on people and how it limits several aspects of their lives, which is not really acknowledged. Like if you have a fixed term contract and you know you're not going to be working after a certain period, then there are so many big life decisions that you have to put on hold. Things like if you're if you're going to buy a house, if you're having a baby or if you're getting married, you want to buy a car. I feel like there was this need to just reduce fixed term contracts or at least change how they work. That definitely came through in the comments. There was also a lot of call for just stability in payment versus obtaining funding. So a lot of the people spoke about how while it's so difficult to just get funding for your research, it's not the same as being paid for a job, how it would be in the conventional sense. And so they were talking about some sort of balance between that or they were requesting a balance between that pairing.

Andrea:
It seems like you're getting all of this funding and you're still having trouble with just getting a salary at the end of the month. So I think that came across as well. Another thing that came across strongly was the need for more flexible schedules so that people can actually do things outside of work and people who have different responsibilities like caretaking responsibilities or just doing things like chores at home. You actually have space for that. You actually have time for that because you're not literally working all day. And I think one last thing that I would want to cover is a lot of people spoke about better supervision and better management and just getting supervisors to account for their behaviors. So here it wasn't better in the sense that people were saying we had bad supervisors. A lot of people were requesting training for their supervisors in the sense that they were saying that just because someone is a senior researcher doesn't mean that they have great people management skills before you assign them someone to supervise. They should actually be taken through a course or some sort of training where they know how to manage another person, how to assign work, how to create workloads or how to provide feedback, things like that.

Emily:
Yes, please, can we have all of these things? Yeah, definitely. Instability in payment, I know is one and putting off life decisions. I can totally understand how that happens, and I've definitely felt that personally as a PhD student. But I guess I've always been like, Oh, I'm a student, you know, like, it's kind of okay, I made this choice. But when it's happening, when you're, you know, working and you're getting a wage and you're still having to kind of put off these major life decisions because you're on year, two year contracts and that kind of thing, which is actually the situation I was in when I was a research assistant before I started my Ph.D.. That starts to get really tricky, and I know that that lack of financial security can really increase rates of anxiety as well and kind of just funnel in more into that higher stress environment. And the training for supervisors is one that I feel super strongly about, but I think for that to. Be implemented, some of these other areas need to be addressed first because the supervisors aren't going to have the capacity to do that training and implement it and kind of. I care about it, yeah. Unless their workloads are also manageable, I think that's just a realistic way of looking at it, unfortunately.

Emily:
But yeah, so Andrea, I know you and I were sort of talking before recording about whether there are any organizations that we know of that exist that are starting to implement some of these strategies. And it's really sad, actually, that both of us kind of came up with blanks. And again, if you're listening and you know of any, I'd love to know what they are. But my understanding is that often once these recommendations made you know from the data that universities and institutions can be a bit slow in implementing them. So we talked about coming back to this point of, you know, feeling supported within academia. You said one of the key things that came out was normalising conversations around research and mental health and having counseling services available and there being no negative consequences to sort of opening up. And that's obviously what voices of academia is about. But we also yeah, I guess I did want to highlight that Dragonfly mental health is really fantastic in that area, too. So I don't know whether you wanted to mention anything about what they're doing, particularly in that space from your kind of personal experience.

Andrea:
The reason I mentioned Dragonfly Mental Health is because they're actually doing a lot of work at the ground level wherein they're actually providing they have workshops that universities can, can actually book, and they'll have someone from Dragonfly come and talk to researchers or doctors supervisors about what they can be doing better to support people's mental health at the university. So that's the reason I mentioned them. I wish there were more that we could talk about, which is why, like I said, initially at Cactus, we decided that while doing this survey is great, we don't want it to just be a one time thing, and it needs to be sustained effort at keeping this conversation going and not letting people forget and just bringing it up on one day of the year or just one awareness week. Let's be aware throughout the year what we led with. I think this also PhD balance and there's yeah, and there's the consortium. I'm not very familiar with exactly the work that they've been doing, but I've seen webinars and I've seen blog posts. I think another thing that I'd want to mention is just one of the things that came out from the survey is that we realized that researchers need a space in which they can talk about what they're going through openly.

Andrea:
And so we came up with a community forum. It's called our voice. While there is Twitter, I understand there is Twitter and the academic mental health community. There is very strong and it's it's thriving. I realize that you can't sometimes say everything on Twitter because it's so public. And so it's for these researchers who might not feel comfortable talking on a social media forum. We've sort of created this community for them, and there's different levels and layers in the community, and you can decide if you want to talk about it openly and available for everyone to see. Or if you want your experience to be in a sort of gated group, which has just a few people who have requested to join. And so they've been through like a screening process. So this is another thing that we thought of coming up with because like I said, initially, there were people saying, thank you for asking me or thank you for giving us the space to sort of speak about this.

Emily:
And yeah, I think it's so important to be normalizing these conversations. I mean, obviously, I think that's important because I run this podcast, but just just to be building that community. And I've said it on Twitter before, but there's no way that I would have been so open about my own experiences of mental illness within academia if I hadn't been a part of the academic mental health community on Twitter. Just the fact that there's been visibility of other researchers that are struggling with a variety of different mental health concerns has given me a lot more confidence and comfort in speaking about my own situation, even if it doesn't necessarily get a positive response. I know that there are so many other people that are going through the same thing because it's now visible to me. And I think that's just so important. And with the dragonfly mental health I fed doing a stack of really amazing things. But I attended one of the workshops on mental health literacy, which I think is fantastic because I think something like that should be made available to every race. When they enter sort of academia, that there is no shame around admitting that you're experiencing mental health concerns because there is a mental health continuum, and the founder Wendy Ingram sort of taught through what that was and what that looks like and how you can shift up and down that scale. And it really normalizes those experiences. And I think kind of helping to break away from that traditional view that, you know, if you have a mental illness, there's something wrong with you like you're broken because obviously they used to do experiments on people with mental illness and they used to be jailed and, you know, segregated from society.

Emily:
So there's a lot, you know, to break in that area. And I think workshops like that are really helping. And also, I don't remember all the details, but Dragonfly Mental Health also provide these multi-step programs. So as you mentioned, universities can kind of bring those on. You can either engage with one or a series of them, and from memory it was around building. So non-hierarchical communities. So for example, being given steps and advice on how to build a PhD student community so that you have peer communities. So building postdoc communities, then also having advisory committees that kind of sit above that. So that is more of a hierarchy, but helping to look after and support people at the lower levels. And there was something else that was part of that program as well. But I think just having kind of tangible steps because it does kind of seem like often people don't really know how to address the problem. And certainly, I know within our institute, our PhD student community has not been strong like the whole time that I've been there and I was on the student committee for a couple of years, I was the social rep and we were trying so many different things to try to build that. But it was really, really difficult to get engagement and we didn't really know how to approach it other than putting some events on telling people about them and kind of leaving it up to the group.

Emily:
There was no yeah, there was no tangible steps for us to kind of follow to try to build that again, even though we knew that it was really, really important for the success of all the PhD students. So, yeah, I know they're doing some fantastic work. I need to familiarize myself a little bit more with PhD balance and a consortium, I think. So thank you for letting me know or reminded me about those. Absolutely. So I am just wary of time. So I guess I do want to circle back because I know we haven't touched too much on feeling valued and safe and included in academia. And I feel like, I mean, honestly, I feel like that could be a whole nother episode because there are so many factors that fall within that. And maybe I can have you back in another time as well to talk about another on another episode about that. But were there any sort of key points that came up from survey participants on that things that people are really struggling with just in case we have anyone in our listening audience that's, you know, feeling like this is an issue for them at the moment and they're feeling a bit alone in that. What was some of the responses that kind of, yes, spoke to you?

Andrea:
So I think the first thing I want to bring up the numbers here, so we had about over one third of the respondents saying that they either had experienced or they were experiencing some form of bullying, discrimination or some sort of harassment that the university or other workplace and. Again, I would say, like when you look at it, it seems like always just thirty seven percent or thirty five percent, so it's it's fine, but it's not fine. It's it's 37 percent of 13000 researchers across the globe, and it would have been a problem even if one person was experiencing something like this. And so I want to bring that up first. Another thing that came across is that also there was a lack of policies at universities and institutions to just check these behaviors, even if they were happening, to either tackle them in a way or to even acknowledge that they were happening. So I think there was. Less than 40 percent of the respondents said that the universities did have policies like these at the university to sort of deal with such behaviors or bullying instances if they do happen. And I think something really strong that came out in the comments was that people said that you need to be creating an environment where we can feel that we can come out and talk about something like this because in this case, if it's happened with you, then it's obvious that you are the target.

Andrea:
And so we should be able to come out and speak about it without it being held against us. And that really broke my heart because a lot of people said that if it's happened and you do come up and complain, then you're the problem. You're the one who's not maintaining the status quo or you're the one who's not a team player. And that just to me, is ridiculous because someone has said that they've been made to feel so uncomfortable and so unsafe at work. And if that's what they're being met with, then that's really cause for concern. A lot of people are also saying that you shouldn't make the person who is complaining or bringing this up feel like they are the problem or they are somehow rocking the boat. And I was telling you before this as well that I've been reading a lot of these instances on bullying and harassment in academia for something new that I'm working on, and the stories are just terrifying. The fact that a lot of people mention having to wait three months or more before they even got any sort of response from the university and constantly being told that it's under review or someone's looking into it, but never meeting these people who are looking into it, never being interviewed or asked for details, or if they had, you know, things like emails that they could show to substantiate what they were saying.

Andrea:
They were never asked for that kind of material. I think it really mirrors what we saw in the survey as well around this wherein people weren't feeling valued or a lot of people weren't feeling safe. There was another stat that I'd want to bring up. There was a question on the survey which asked people to agree or disagree with this statement. I feel welcome included in my organization and by my peers supervisors, irrespective of my gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or social background. And while most of the people agreed to this, we still had about 20 percent disagreeing. And that again, to me, it was really scary because it made me wonder whether these people are able to speak about it, what's making them feel unwelcome, who is making them feel unwelcome, whether there's someone out there who's thinking about ways in which they can feel more included. We also had a lot of researchers take the survey, say that they were working in the country different from the country of origin. And so then that again makes you wonder whether they have any sort of support or whether they're living far away from home when they're family and if there's anyone that they can even talk to at the university or in the country that they're currently in.

Emily:
Yeah. And I I definitely feel like there's at least in the areas that I've worked, there's quite a lack of diversity within academia. And whether that's just perceived or true, I guess, is a point because obviously feeling comfortable enough to disclose your full identity within a work setting is a huge challenge, and you want to make sure that that's in a supportive environment, which at this point I don't think academia is, which is really sad. But yeah, it sounds like there's really a lack of transparency in procedures for addressing bullying and harassment. And I don't know. How that would be addressed, you know, is that something that would be part of this campaign that you're involved in?

Andrea:
It is too early for me to talk about it yet, but we are looking at what people can do both at an individual level as well as at an institutional level to sort of if not, I mean, it's difficult to fix something if it's not being acknowledged, right? So we're trying to encourage people to at least acknowledge the different kinds of bullying that happened. Most people would think that bullying is just blatant bullying, where in your yelling at someone or you're shouting at someone, screaming at someone. But there's so many different levels to this and something like deliberately excluding someone from the group or not telling them when you're meeting up or not telling them when this meeting is happening with someone else can also be a form of bullying. It can be a form of social bullying or deliberately blocking opportunities or withholding things like a recommendation letter that is also a form of bullying. And so we feel like there needs to be more awareness that this is bullying, and it's not just certain kinds of things that can be classified as bullying behavior. So we're looking at talking about things like this and talk about what can be done at both an individual and at an institutional level in terms of just creating a safe environment like we were just talking about and letting people know that if they do speak about it, then it's not going to be held against them.

Emily:
Yeah, it would definitely be helpful, I think, to have some more education around, you know, what constitutes abuse and bullying and what the different forms are that that takes because I know personally, I wasn't really very familiar with kind of subvert emotional abuse until more recently. And that is something that happens all the time. And in some cultures, it's, you know, just a very acceptable part of the culture. I mean, I know in Australia, we actually we joke around a lot and kind of it's code, you know, taking the piss out of people. So it's actually part of the Australian culture. And it always has been, and it's something that I now feel actually quite uncomfortable about like it. It feels really strange that it's acceptable to be speaking negatively to someone that you have a really close relationship with. And I know when I was living overseas, I, you know, was just doing that, you know, banter with some people from a different country, and they became really offended. And at the time, I couldn't really understand why, because to me in Australia, that's something, you know, that's how we behave all the time. But yeah, it definitely gave me a different perspective in that particular situation. And now, you know, for other reasons, I've learned more about the different forms that bullying and abuse can take. And you know, I just I now really feel like all of these topics should be covered from, like primary school. And that would be super, super helpful. But I guess for those of us that come from a generation where, you know, those before us really didn't talk about any of this, and it certainly wasn't kind of covered for us, and we didn't even necessarily become aware of a lot of this until, you know, our 20s, 30s, 40s.

Emily:
It would definitely be helpful to implement some of this within the workplace, and I definitely feel like that could come under the realm of air responsibility or even occupational health and safety. And I would love to see a day where when new honors students, master's students, PhD students are orientated to a university or an institute. And also when postdocs and you know, more senior researchers are going through orientation at an institution that they have, you know, one of those welcome days that talks about, you know, all the different things that they normally talk about, but they also have a section on some of these topics like you really experience stress. This is a high stress environment. These are some of the things that might happen, and this is where you can go. This is what some of the negative things that can happen in a workplace. This is what you can do about it. Like, I just it just makes so much sense to me that that would just be a natural part of orientation. And, you know, I hope eventually we can get to that point, but I might tie it up there, Andrea. Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on before we sort of finish up and say our goodbyes?

Andrea:
We've pretty much covered all of the topics that we hoped to cover today. I don't know if we should maybe quickly talk about research, culture and mental health and just maybe talk about one or two comments that came across that's actually talking about the fact that research culture is affecting their mental health.

Emily:
Yeah. So what came up in the survey, because that's obviously an area that's of personal interest to me and also personal interest to our listeners.

Andrea:
So one of the comments, and I think this is in the report as well in the first report that really spoke to me was about a need to fight the stigma on mental illness and provide better resources for mental health that go beyond telling someone to just take a few deep breaths or to calm down. And I feel like there is probably a misconception on what mental health support might be or should be like. A lot of the people spoke about how the research culture that they were currently working in was hypercompetitive. It was very it was a very stressful environment and it was stressful for people who didn't necessarily have mental health issues or were living with mental illness. So a lot of the comments spoke about. Imagine how much worse it is for someone who is living with mental health issues and someone who is living with mental illness. And that really came across in comments like these, wherein if someone is telling you that they do have mental health issues, then you can't just put a Band-Aid on it and say things like, Oh, you should exercise more or you should come down, take a few deep breaths. It really came across to me that it was somehow the current research culture was somehow exacerbating these existing issues wherein no one was really talking about them in a way that made people feel safe. Safe enough to talk about it, or it didn't make them feel reassured that even if they did bring it up, whether it would be beneficial for them in terms of getting some sort of support or getting accommodations. And I think that really came across in some of these comments in the survey.

Emily:
Yeah. And I it's so much about how. Those responses are framed, I feel in my perspective anyway, because I know that breathing exercises and exercise are actually incredibly helpful in certain situations. So obviously if you experience acute anxiety or panic attacks, then learning how to be mindful and focus on your breathing is legitimately helpful in that situation. And exercise is even if it's just a walk every day. If you're experiencing depression, can really help to lift the mood and help to feel a sense of accomplishment and help to reduce feelings of fatigue and obviously give you some vitamin D and that kind of thing as well. But I only kind of know that because I've had those experiences and I've, you know, been able to talk about this in supportive environments. So although the responses are kind of. Accurate to a degree, I think it's around educating people. How to communicate, I suppose. Right. And if they don't have, you know, personal experience and if they can't relate to what someone is saying to them about their current concerns, then having the education to direct them to people who can. And I guess that's where the mental health first aid courses that have become available, I think, are really fantastic. But I. Yeah, it it yeah, because it's very dismissive to have someone tell you, and I've certainly had this experience as well, but, you know, just take a walk like just all like, you know, just get a new job, like change your place of work, et cetera, et cetera. And when you're experiencing mental illness like that, it just that doesn't, you know, it doesn't work like that.

Emily:
Like, it's a deeper it's a deeper issue. And so even if those responses are very well-meaning, like I said, I really feel like that needs to be some education around communication. So I guess that is where if institutions and universities make services available, where people can go and speak to someone that is going to create a supportive space and they're going to feel like they're going to be listened to, they're going to be speaking to someone that is non-judgmental and empathetic. And, you know, there won't be any negative consequences for them. I guess that's perhaps why it came out in the survey that it would be helpful for the mental health support to be separate from direct supervisors so that it's someone that you can go to kind of separately. And I know like universities do have counseling services available in a lot of cases, they could potentially be a little bit difficult to access or you may not have been told about them. So there could be a little bit difficult to find. But I guess, yeah, there are steps being taken in that area, but it could could certainly improve. I think, I think in individual institutions, particularly because if you are, you know, through university, but you're doing your research at a research institution and all of the mental health supports are only available at the university campus, for example, then it's not accessible and it's not realistic. So I don't know if you had any further comments on that.

Andrea:
I wasn't aware that there are a lot of universities that, you know, that have counseling facilities. I I haven't experienced it myself. I I wish I had, but I'm glad to hear that there are universities that do have counseling services or at least supported access to such services.

Emily:
Mm-hmm. And I'm not sure what it's lacking in other countries, but a lot of workplaces in Australia provide access to what's known as an employee assistance program. So you get a certain number of free sessions with an affiliated. They are generally counselors over the phone or in person. And again, it can potentially be a little bit difficult to access, and sometimes the hours of those appointments are available can be a little bit tricky or there can be some waitlists. But that is, I guess, one of the steps that some workplaces are trying to take. I don't know whether that's accessible in other countries or not or what your experience has been with that.

Andrea:
No, I haven't. So I got this. We do have wellbeing initiatives within the organization as well for employees, and we do have, like you just said, supported access to a counselor. But I was speaking more from from an educational institution perspective here, wherein throughout my education life, I've never really felt like there was this kind of support or this kind of this kind of infrastructure that I could access or at least seek out. I mean, you, you will find and I don't know if this is across universities in India, but there'll always be professors who will say things like, Oh, you can come talk to me, but then no one's really talking about, then what and what are we going to do if once I tell you this personal thing about myself, then what are we going to do with that information? Can you really help me? Can you guide me to resources that could really support me? And it's been a while that I've been at a university, so I hope things are changing, but I don't have any firsthand information or knowledge about this. So what the current scenarios is,

Emily:
So I just want to really thank you, Andrea, I guess, for coming forward and for being willing to share some of your own personal story. This survey, and again, just really want to thank Cactus for the work that they're doing within this space. I think this survey that we've talked about today touches on a wide variety of issues that are within academia on a global level, as well as some of the suggestions for how to overcome them. And obviously, whenever we talk about these things, I mean, I find it really overwhelming to sort of, I guess, recognize all of the flaws that there are. But the fact that there are organizations like yours that are putting this data together and allowing that to be available for steps to be taken for. For improvements, you know, it is going to be a bit of a long process, but the ball is rolling, so I'll keep to that positive note. But if listeners would like to get in touch with you, Andrea, I know you're available on Twitter @AndieAitch. So it's at @AndieAitch... And also, if you'd like to follow the Cactus Mental Health Initiative on Twitter, they're available @CactusMHS... So that's @CactusMHS and the report that we've been sort of drawing from today is also, as I mentioned at the start of the episode, freely available online for download, and we'll put a link to that as well as a lot of the other, you know, resources and organizations that we mentioned into the episode description.

Emily:
So, yeah, looking forward to keeping in touch with you, Andrea on Twitter. I'm really keen to see where this campaign goes, but that does bring us close to the end of today's episode or voices of academia to you listening. As always, thank you so much for choosing to share some of your time with us. I'd love to know how you felt about the results from the survey and also this style of episode. Let me know on Twitter @EKing_Sci for science. Otherwise I look forward to having you with me again in a couple of weeks for now. Before you go, we have some support resources and information for how you can share your own story. If this episode brought anything up for you, there are mental health resources and emergency numbers available for various countries at www.CheckPointOrg.com/Global. For information found in this episode, refer to the episode description or visit the podcast section of our website www.VoicesOfAcademia.com. There you can also access the full transcript of this episode made available by our lovely Voices of Academia team member Daniel Ranson.

Emily:
This podcast was written, hosted and produced by me, Emily, with support from some very special people in my life. You can find me on Twitter @EKing_Sci for science, but I'm part of the larger Voices of Academia team. We have a website, a Twitter account @AcademicVoices and also share stories in blog form, with the option of them being anonymous. If you like this podcast and want to hear more stories, please leave a review. Subscribe! Tell me what you think on Twitter and tell your friends. The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and most other major listening platforms. You can also follow the Voices of Academia blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Just head to our website www.VoicesOfAcademia.com To sign up. If you have a mental health or wellness story to share, we absolutely want to hear from you. Whether you're a team leader, research assistant, postdoc, student, ex-academic or any other type of researcher, Follow @AcademicVoices on Twitter. Visit the link in the episode description or visit our website www.VoicesOfAcademia.com For details on how to share your story. It's time someone gave you a voice.

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