Mental Health amongst University Staff

[Feline1]

I don’t know whether you’ve seen this new research on mental health in universities. I suspect it’s the tip of the iceberg. If you are suffering poor mental health in HE, you aren’t alone. Any thoughts? More specifically, any thoughts about how to deal with this? www.theguardian.com/education/2019/may/23/higher-education-staff-suffer-epidemic-of-poor-mental-health?fbclid=IwAR2PwuJW_BLbx64WDbGPDNec-rQEo47PKmZeWsyVUsckWkYIlMUEQ-dM8uU

@chemener, I've been in academia for 15 years and completely agree with everything you've said. We're very aware that we don't have the sense of community with students that used to exist. In fact, I was asking my students today whether they felt a sense of belonging/identity and all of them said no. We've been promised a new building with social space for at least 10 years, but there's never any money to make it happen. (In spite of the fact that computing/life sciences and others have got lovely new buildings).

I've heard a lot of discriminatory comments from colleagues against those with mental illness. I have bipolar disorder and have only told a very small number of people about it because I fear that I would be treated differently. It's things like our mitigating circumstances committee for students where they've given an extension to someone with a broken leg, but refused it for someone with depression.

Sorry, chemenger, I spent your name wrongly! It's only week 2 of the semester and my brain is already fried.

I don’t appear to be able to spell anything, if my last post is anything to go by. Honest, it was my phone.

The more I think about it the more I think that the causes of our student mental health crisis are also the causes of a staff mental health crisis but we are just older and more able to hide or mask our problems. I know that the people I have disclosed my own feelings to are apparently astonished that I’m not coping.

chemenger what you say resonates with me, we lost our common room with sandwiches and tea and basically are spread out in small rooms, often shared now, across a wide space with little sense we are in one department. The students then feel detached from that further- their IT and admin help is all depersonalized instead of having one well-known admin/secretary who they would speak with. There are no opportunities for informal conversations with anyone. I'm not as affected as new staff as I have been here a long time and so have quite a few friends I meet for coffee/dinner out of work so I have a good idea what's going on and enjoy those chats. Others though have told me they feel personally and professionally isolated.

Our common room was converted into an office suite for our head of department. Now we literally have a converted cupboard with a boiling tap.

Problem is the way things are going sometimes the atmosphere is so stressful the last thing you want to do it spend time with colleagues. Particularly ones who for some reason aren't allocated anywhere near the teaching load you have...

I was feeling quite upbeat until yesterday when I was asked to resume a management role which I have held twice before and both times has wrecked my mental well-being. This time no means no. Last time I was promised that there would be proper planning so that I would never be asked to do it again. I felt an almost physical weight landing on my shoulders and a feeling of uncontrollable misery.

Oh, no. My friend had to resign after he had to take a management role and they wouldn’t let him go back to lecturing. It ate away at him. I hope you managed to sort this in your favour.

@chemenger Benjamin Ginsberg called the bureaucratic takeover of HE “the administrative bloat”. I think the notion of sickness inherent in the word “bloat” really works. As one reviewer put it, the term describes how “universities have degenerated into poorly managed pseudo-corporations controlled by bureaucrats so far removed from research and teaching that they have barely any idea what these activities involve.“ They seem to forget that, without academics, they wouldn’t have a job in a university. www.amazon.co.uk/Fall-Faculty-Benjamin-Ginsberg/dp/0199975434?tag=mumsnetforu03-21