Mental health, part 2: Be a first responder

I’m super excited to now be sharing my thoughts and advice on navigating academia via my monthly Office Hours column in Chemical & Engineering News! I’ll be posting unedited versions of my columns on delay here on my blog, and you can catch the best and latest versions (and ask your question!) at my C&EN Office Hours site. As always, comments welcome – these topics impact us all, and we should all be part of the dialogue!

I would like to raise mental health awareness among faculty members within my department. I think there is generally a lack of awareness and advocacy for student mental health, particularly for graduate students. I would like to ask if you have specific advice on what I can do as a faculty member, and what obstacles I should anticipate. -Anonymous assistant professor

Welcome to the second half of a two-part series tackling this difficult, yet extremely important question. In last month’s column, I proposed that faculty need to first take care of our own mental health so that we can lead by example and be prepared to help our students. Now that you’ve secured your own oxygen mask, you’re ready to assist the person sitting next to you. Creating an environment that supports student mental health requires that we do three things: recognize the challenge, take action, and empower others.

Recognize the challenge.  In a 2014 survey of graduate students, 34.4% reported moderate to severe depression, 7.3% had thoughts of suicide, and 2.3% had plans for suicide. This study was conducted at a single university, but nationwide surveys show similar trends. This means that when you sit in a seminar room with ~40 grad students, on average 14 of those students are struggling with depression, 3 are considering suicide, and 1 has a plan. These are numbers that we can’t ignore. We also need to understand what mental illness is and isn’t. Mental illness is not a choice. It is not feeling sad, lacking motivation, or worrying too much. Those are the symptoms, not the cause. Mental illness is a physical illness. Like other illnesses, it can be traced to biochemical disruptions that impair the normal functioning of our cells. In the case of mental illness, those cells just happen to be in the brain.

Take action. As group leaders, lab safety is a critical part of our job. We are responsible for putting in place policies and training to minimize the risk of physical injury from the chemicals or equipment used in our labs. I would argue that we also have a responsibility to minimize the risk of mental injury by creating environments that support psychological safety. One example of a practical action you can take is to craft a well-being policy for your lab. This policy can articulate your support for things such as students taking time out of lab to visit a mental health professional or traveling home to cope with the loss of a family member. My own lab policy includes both of these items as well as flexible work hours to promote healthy work-life integration – sometimes the science sets our schedule for us, so going to the gym or running errands during the day is encouraged if that is what will allow someone to use their time most efficiently.

In addition to minimizing the risk of physical injury in our lab, we are responsible for providing basic first aid when an accident does occur. And, just as we need to know what to do if someone spills a chemical in their eye, we need to know how to respond if a student is suffering a mental health crisis. In the example of a chemical spill, we know to assess the nature of the spill: start the eye wash as quickly as possible, and then transport to a hospital or clinic if needed.  The same process applies when responding to a mental health emergency. There are simple steps we can learn to assess the risk of harm to that person or others, listen and respond with support and reassurance, and encourage follow up with a mental health professional. Just as there is a good chance we’ll have to respond to an accident in lab at some point in our careers, there is a good chance we’ll have to respond to a student mental health crisis. We need to be prepared for both.

Empower others. While there is much we can do as faculty to support student mental health, we are not the only ones who can create change. Many–if not most–of the successful initiatives I’ve seen are driven by students, postdocs, and staff. These can include promoting activities outside of lab, social awareness campaigns around mental health topics, and adding structure and feedback to the graduate program timeline. As faculty, we should be asking how we can empower and partner with those around us who are already taking positive action.

If this topic feels overwhelming, you are not alone. We were trained to be scientists, not mental health advocates. The good news is that we are capable of learning and growing, and big strides can be achieved even through small efforts. The next generation of science innovators is counting on us to get this right.

Mental health, part 1: Secure your oxygen mask first

I’m super excited to now be sharing my thoughts and advice on navigating academia via my monthly Office Hours column in Chemical & Engineering News! I’ll be posting unedited versions of my columns on delay here on my blog, and you can catch the best and latest versions (and ask your question!) at my C&EN Office Hours site. As always, comments welcome – these topics impact us all, and we should all be part of the dialogue!

I would like to raise mental health awareness among faculty members within my department. I think there is generally a lack of awareness and advocacy for student mental health, particularly for graduate students. I would like to ask if you have specific advice on what I can do as a faculty member, and what obstacles I should anticipate. -Anonymous assistant professor

There is a documented mental health crisis among students and postdocs. As faculty, we are often the first responders in this crisis, and there is much we can do to provide support and help individuals seek out treatment when needed. But, before we get to that, there’s something else we need to talk about, and this column will be the first in a two-part series aimed at addressing this question.

If someone is drowning, who should they look to for help? Someone else who is drowning? Of course not. They should look to the person who has made it out of the water and knows where to find the life preserver. Same goes for the mental health crisis. As faculty, we can’t be of much help to students struggling with their mental health if we’re not taking care of our own. After all, how can we serve as effective mentors and teachers if we don’t have the emotional bandwidth to meet our own needs? How can we expect students and postdocs to practice good self-care and seek out help when they need it if we don’t? (Or if we’re afraid to admit that we do).

It’s good that we talk about student and postdoc mental health, but we also need to talk about faculty mental health. Let’s face it, this job self-selects for people who have very high expectations for ourselves and obsess over our craft, and places us in an environment where failure is the norm and isolation is the default. We are perfectly primed to struggle with stress, anxiety, burnout, and depression. What can we do about this? Talking about it helps, and we also need to change the culture to value self-care and de-stigmatize seeking professional help.

Let’s tackle self-care first. We spend a lot of time discussing how much we work and how little we sleep. Could it be that we do this because we think that everyone else around us is working harder than us, and that breeds insecurity? If that’s the case, then this creates a self-reinforcing cycle that quickly spirals out of control. What if we intentionally shifted our conversations to talk more about what we do when we’re not working – the concert we went to last night, the yoga class we’re going to this afternoon, the family vacation planned for next month. Sometimes my schedule makes it such that the only time I can get out for a run is during the “work day.” I used to surreptitiously change into my running clothes and then bolt for the door, hoping to make it outside without anyone seeing me and thinking I was slacking on work. That’s ridiculous. I should feel comfortable managing my time how I see best, and proud – not ashamed – of modeling good self-care for my lab members.

And then there’s the topic of seeing a counselor, therapist, or other mental health professional. While students and postdocs are becoming increasingly open about this, there remains a much larger stigma for faculty. We hold a view that seeking out help means we’re weak, and if we’re weak, then we don’t belong in leadership positions. I’d argue that we need to embrace the opposite mindset. It’s hard to believe that any faculty member is immune from stress and burnout, and many will also face depression or anxiety. Everyone struggles, and the people who have the self-awareness to recognize they need help and the courage to seek it out are exactly the type people we want in positions of leadership. I personally have found value in the ability of a counselor to re-center my perspective and help me manage stress productively. This in turn makes me more effective at work and a more enjoyable person to be around.

So, how do we change the culture? It can feel daunting to think about this, but our culture is just comprised of all of the things that we think, say, and do. We can join together and recognize that we have a problem, start talking openly about it, and decide that taking care of ourselves is something that we value. It’s only when we get this right for ourselves that we’ll be prepared to help our students and postdocs. Stay tuned for more on that topic next month.

Impostor syndrome: Own your abilities

I’m super excited to now be sharing thoughts and advice on navigating academia via my monthly Office Hours column in Chemical & Engineering News! I’ll be posting unedited versions of my columns on delay here on my blog, and you can catch the best and latest versions (and contribute your questions!) at my C&EN Office Hours site. As always, comments welcome – these topics impact us all, and we should all be part of the dialogue!

How do you combat imposter syndrome during big transitions (undergrad to grad school, grad school to postdoc, postdoc to faculty, etc) and how do you prevent imposter syndrome from affecting your success? -Sara Dubbury

Our own thoughts can be our best friend and our worst enemy. They fuel the thrill of creativity and discovery, they encourage us to learn and grow, and they form the foundation for our connection to others. But, they are also the source of cruel insecurities that can discourage us from taking on a challenge or prevent us from being able to give it our best. Two types of insecurities that frequently plague us as scientists are self-doubt and impostor syndrome. Self-doubt is thinking that you’re not good enough to get somewhere that you want to be or achieve something that you want to do. Impostor syndrome is when you do get to that place or achieve that goal, and then your thoughts tell you that you don’t deserve it. Worse, they tell you that everyone around you knows that you don’t deserve it. Ouch.

So, are these thoughts accurate? Probably not. Our insecurities are usually based upon fallacies – deceptive thought patterns that our mind casts upon reality.  In the case of impostor syndrome, I’ve seen two main fallacies. The first is a “subjective” belief that you don’t belong where you are – you can’t quite put your finger on a specific way in which everyone is better than you, but you sense that they are perfect and you know that you are not. This is especially common during the transitions that you mention – you are joining a new lab or workplace with new people, and while you are struggling to get your bearings and figure out how to be successful there, everyone else seems to have it mastered.  The second type of fallacy is a seemingly “objective” one – it’s based on data, and as scientists, we all love data, right? This happens when you look around and recognize that you are an outlier compared to everyone else around you.  This happened to me recently at a symposium in which I was invited to participate. As I surveyed the list of speakers, it quickly became apparent that by all metrics – seniority, job title, awards – “one of these people was not like the others,” and that person was me.

How do we counter each of these? I often hear the advice to do something that builds up your confidence and helps you to convince yourself that you deserve to be there. But, I’ve always felt uncomfortable with this advice. First, that’s just a really challenging thing to do, especially in the face of data that might seem to suggest otherwise, such as the case with my symposium invite. Second, this creates a slippery slope toward entitlement – if I convince myself that I deserve to be somewhere, then I might think that I no longer have to work hard to excel. I might also convince myself that the people who didn’t make it to that place don’t in fact deserve to be there. That’s not a thought pattern that I want to spend time in.

My approach is to instead recognize that it really doesn’t matter where I deserve to be or not be, because I am there and I’m thankful for that and I want to make the most of it. It also helps to take a step back and change my perspective on the situation. In the case of starting out in a new lab or stage of your career, recognize that the people around you seem to know what they’re doing because they’ve been there for a while, and that they were once just like you – the new person feeling lost and struggling to figure everything out. They developed their knowledge and skills by working hard and improving each day, and you can do the same. In the case of an “objective” set of metrics that suggest you don’t belong, consider that you might be looking at the wrong metrics. Our thoughts can make us downplay the importance of areas where we excel, while magnifying the importance of areas where we struggle.

Importantly, fighting impostor syndrome is something that you don’t have to do alone. Enlist the help of friends, colleagues, and mentors to remind you that you’ve developed expertise and thrived in new situations before and can do that again, or to point out the unique set of skills and accomplishments that you have but might not recognize.  Finally, if all else fails, when your thoughts tell you that everyone around you has it all figured out, recognize that they probably also got it right when they chose to hire you or invite you.