Mental Health Initiatives

This initiative aims to develop a repository of science faculty members talking about their experiences with failure during graduate school.  We aim to normalize and promote coping with failure during graduate school.  If you’re interested in getting involved as a faculty member, click here.  If you’re interested in learning about developments related to this initiative, click here.

This initiative aims to create an international support network of postgraduate scientists interested in mental health advocacy in academia.  This group meets monthly to identify threats to postgraduate mental health and develop strategies to promote mental health in academic science. Click here to join this initiative.

This grant project aims to assess the current state of science graduate student mental health and identify what aspects of graduate school alleviate and exacerbate students’ anxiety and depression.  Check out the resulting publications:

• The relationship between PhD research and graduate student depression
• Graduate students reluctant to reveal depression in the lab

In collaboration with the Lab for Scalable Mental Health at Northwestern University, we have developed Project Engage.  Project Engage encompasses a brief online single-session intervention designed to help undergraduate students cope with fear of negative evaluation in large-enrollment biology courses.  Read more about this work here.

We know that one out of four science instructors report struggling with depression, yet few of them reveal that to students so students with depression do not realize that they have role models in the front of the room. Our group has demonstrated for the first time a positive impact on students when an instructor reveals that they struggle with depression and we have plans to look at this across different instructors and institutions. If you are interested in participating in a future study, please contact sara.brownell@asu.edu.