‘Stories about mental health issues in academia are not cries of the privileged but vital to the future of research.’ Photograph: Alamy
“There are rather a lot of moaners in educational circles,” comments one Guardian reader on a recent article on mental illness among doctoral researchers and academics.
“There are plenty of skives in academia,” adds another commenter who thinks PhD students and university lecturers really have nothing to complain about, especially not in in comparison to other workers.
And an anonymous doctoral student confesses they experience a constant “internal conflict about the extent to which those of us who are lucky enough to be undertaking research at PhD level should complain about the difficulties on the path we have chosen”.
Not cries of the privileged
Lots of people talk about privilege these days, and it’s part of the conversation about mental health too. They refer to the “privilege” of being able to attend university and complete a degree, the “privilege” of carrying out out doctoral research, and the “privilege” of making your passion your job in the form of an academic career.
If you enjoy one or more of those privileges, the argument goes, then apparently you forfeit your right to draw attention to your struggles as an individual, to those of your wider profession, or to the working conditions that exacerbate – perhaps even cause – these issues.
If you have the privilege of making your voice heard, then don’t. Shut up and put up is the only path to which you are entitled once you are in a position in which people may listen, no matter how hard you’ve worked to gain that voice. A rich irony, of course, particularly for those of us who are educationally privileged but belong to marginalised groups on one or several other levels, be it through colour, class, ability, or gender.
Mental illness is not an issue confined to academia
Speaking about mental illness in academia is not to say that the sector’s workers are subject to worse conditions and expectations than those in other areas of employment (even if, on some levels, this may be the case). It is not a dramatic swoon of a handful of academics, complaining, with a sweaty brow and hand on forehead, of their terrible lot. Rather, these discussions and narratives are a small part in a bigger social and medical puzzle, a beginning to the de-stigmatising of mental illness more broadly, beginning – but not ending – in higher education.
Mental illness is not an issue confined to academia, but this makes it no less important to discuss it within this particular context. Neither are mental health issues confined to one particular group involved in higher education: they afflict administrative staff, management, researchers, and postgraduate and undergraduate students alike. All are caught up in a complex system of relationships defined largely by a combination of issues within and outside of the academy, including the marketisation ofand neo-liberal trends in university education.
Discussions contribute to a wider social issue
If open discussion of mental illness in academia is only a sign of our privilege, what do I tell the student who confides in me when they experience panic attacks, depression, and post-traumatic stress, and when they do so precisely because I discuss mental health issues openly?
What do I tell the doctoral researcher who feels the pressure of part-time contracts and competition so acutely that they regularly and increasingly doubt their own worth, not only as a scholar but also as a human being?
Should I tell them, as one commenter put it, that their lives are “pretty easy going compared to [that of] a miner”?
Unhelpful notions marginalise academic groups
Equally unhelpful, of course, is the notion that mental health issues are just part of the job. That they are psychological battle scars only the strongest and smartest can bear, those chosen few, the elite who are “made” for academic life (a notion which for so long has largely kept, and continues to keep, marginalised groups out of the academy and has reinforced so many other notions of privilege).
The wealth of advice out there on how to cope mentally at varying stages of higher education and in academia is testament to the fact that it is not only a “failing” few who struggle.
It demonstrates that we, whose profession it is to seek knowledge, recognise the problems of our sector and the impact they have on the quality of our work, the future of higher education, and our lives.
It shows that, in the slow process of change we are trying to initiate, we acknowledge our own as well as others’ struggles as worthy of attention and support. And we will not perpetuate the silence in which mental illness has been cloaked for so long both within and outside of the academy.
Nadine Muller is lecturer in English literature cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University – follow her on Twitter@Nadine_Muller.
h/t – The Guardian
