Academic research is buzzing with due dates to submit funding proposals, conference proposals, and research manuscripts for publication. Let’s pull the break for a minute and talk about transformative well-being, towards better self-care and nourishment.

We will show you simple tools and habit changes to get back more energy, vitality, and joy doing your research activities. The deployment of selected digital tools combined with a reflection on nutritious food, physical exercise, mindset, and lifestyle practices will support you to show up every day ready to be your best healthiest self and capable of doing more of what you want that brings you a feeling of purpose and accomplishment with your research.

As academics and researchers, we operate in a fast-paced working environment. It is therefore likely to overwork ourselves and experience levels of overwhelm and even run into mental health issues that make it difficult to keep pace with the workload.

We are here to assist you in developing strategies to make room and time for relaxation, physical exercise, recovery breaks, and holidays so that we can maintain a healthy and functional state of mind.

Below are selected resources that may serve as access points should you need assistance or if you want to learn more about how best to support colleagues, friends, and family members who seem to be struggling in the academic working environment.

ReMO COST Action CA19117: “Researcher Mental Health”
The ReMO COST Action focuses on wellbeing and mental health within academia, a theme of strategic importance for the European Research Area. Previous research shows that low levels of wellbeing and mental health problems have a negative impact on individual, team and organizational performance, triggering significant costs. In addition, institutional context, organizational structure and culture, as well as managerial practices have significant impact on wellbeing and health of employees. Therefore, general insights on the causes of workplace wellbeing and mental health need to be refined with contextual specifics (i.e. in academia) in order to develop tailored, effective and efficient prevention and action programs.

References

Elsherif, M. M., Middleton, S. L., Phan, J. M., Azevedo, F., Iley, B. J., Grose-Hodge, M., … Dokovova, M. (2022, June 20). Bridging Neurodiversity and Open Scholarship: How Shared Values Can Guide Best Practices for Research Integrity, Social Justice, and Principled Education. doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/k7a9p

Levecque, K., Anseel, F., de Beuckelaer, A., van der Heyden, J., & Gisle, L. (2017). Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students. Research Policy, 46(4), 868– 879. /doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.02.008

Find more research on Mental Health in Academia in the ReMO Zotero library: /2521493/researcher_mental_health/library

IASC Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings

Blog posts and podcast episodes with a focus on Mental Health and Wellbeing

A series of meditation sessions guided by our late colleague Jon Tennant.

Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings
– Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings  in various languages (2007)

Mental health helplines and support services:
– Ukraine, Онлайн-консультации Teenergizer, teenergizer.org/consultations
– Lifeline Ukraine, Лінія запобігання самогубствам, lifelineukraine.com, ✆ 7333

Mental Health Europe
– mhe-sme.org/library/helplines/ (scroll down for detailed information by country)
>> mhe-sme.org/what-we-do/ukraine/ 

Psychosocial Centre working under the framework of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC); pscentre.org/ // pscentre.org/resource-category/emergencies/ukraine-response/
The PS Centre has produced a video in Ukrainian introducing the principles of Psychological First Aid, also known as PFA: https://pscentre.org/video-lets-talk-about-psychological-first-aid-in-ukrainian/ 

MitOst contacts for mental support – counseling by licensed therapists, psychologists, and volunteers in various countries: mitost.org/ukraine/mental-support/ 

Disaster Ready; Free Mental Health Resources for Ukraine Response, 
– Youtube playlists: https://www.youtube.com/user/disasterready1/playlists