 Welcome to May's ECR webinar hosted by E-Life, the series that aims to give early career researchers a platform to discuss issues important to you and your research career. Today's speakers will discuss mental health initiatives that could support you and your fellow researchers. The webinar will begin with the panelists sharing their stories, then in the second half we will be putting your questions to them. To ask a question you can type in what you want to ask in the question box on the go to webinar function panel or you can tweet us. We are at E-Life community using the hashtag ECR Wednesday. Finally, I would like to let you know that we are recording the webinar and we will make it available on YouTube in the near future. Now I'll pass over to Brian to introduce the panelists. Thank you Elsa and hello everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our early career researcher Wednesday webinar discussing the very important topic of mental health support for early career researchers. My name is Breanne Kent. I am a postdoc at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School and chair of the E-Life Early Career Advisory Group. I will be the moderator for today's webinar. Just a word about our host, E-Life is a nonprofit organization and open access journal that is working to improve all aspects of research communication in support of excellence in science. The role of the early career advisory group is to influence and support E-Life's work to catalyze broad reform in the evaluation and communication of science. And in particular to represent the needs and aspirations of researchers at early stages in their careers for a research culture that is healthy for science and for scientists. This webinar series, ECR Wednesdays, is just one of the initiatives that E-Life has launched to help support the early career community. I would like to welcome our three speakers. We have with us Joe Franchetti, engineering engagement manager at Trainline, Susanna Harris, PhD candidate at UNC Chapel Hill, and Michael Chen, who's the managing director of It Gets Brighter and graduate student at the University of Oxford. Thank you all so much for joining us today. Over the next hour, our speakers will discuss mental health and science with a particular focus on mental health support for early career researchers. Please follow us on Twitter at E-Life community and with the hashtag ECR Wednesday. Mental health is a growing concern for early career researchers. There is greater awareness of how the acute pressures from the hyper-competitive job market publish or perish culture and sometimes isolating nature of research contributes to the unacceptably high rates of depression and anxiety among scientists. With this greater awareness, there is also an increasing number of initiatives aimed at helping early career researchers improve their mental health. Today, our panelists will speak about imposter syndrome and perfectionism, ongoing initiatives that support mental health in academia, and how the medical student well-being index could be adopted in graduate schools. We will now open the floor to our speakers. Up first is Joe Franchetti. Joe is the engineering engagement manager at Trainline. She has worked in various parts of the tech industry, from startups, agencies, charities, and to large organizations. She is passionate not only for teaching good use of the web, but also for improving the diversity and inclusivity of the tech industry. Welcome, Joe. Take over. Thank you so much for the lovely intro. Can you all see my slides there? Excellent. Okay, so thank you so much. That was such a great intro. I'm Joe Franchetti, and yeah, I'm a tech engagement manager. So my job is to make sure that the developers who work at Trainline have a great developer experience. And also to encourage developers to do things like public speaking, which obviously takes a lot of courage and can cause a lot of issues like imposter syndrome. I am also, as you said, an organizer and coach at Codebar, so I spend a lot of my time talking to people who work in the tech industry, from developers to designers to managers to people who work in product, a whole range of people from different seniority levels and different walks of life. I've started to notice some trends and these are trends in people who are not only starting their careers, but have maybe been in their careers for a long time. And these are trends in behaviors and beliefs and in complaints amongst skilled and highly intelligent people in general. So this is me and honestly, the first thing that made me start researching these issues is because I was feeling them so intensely myself. In fact, they became almost crippling to me on occasion. The issues that I see regularly are imposter syndrome and perfectionism. These can both lead to general anxiety. So I'd like to give you a brief introduction to these concepts, along with some just information about how to recognize these in yourself. So let's get started. Let's talk about firstly imposter syndrome. With this, you may have heard called imposter phenomenon or imposter experience. Imposter syndrome describes the feeling that you haven't really earned your accomplishments. That by fraud or just dumb luck, you've ended up in the same place as other people who you deem worthy, and you don't feel like you deserve to be there. Imposter syndrome kind of downplays how universal this feeling is amongst intelligent and skilled people. It's not a disease and it's not an abnormality. And it isn't always tied to self-esteem or anxiety or even depression, but it is very prevalent in highly skilled people. So where do these feelings come from? Other skilled or intelligent tend to believe that their colleagues and their peers are also skilled and intelligent. And this can sometimes cause you to judge yourself against others and to do so unfairly and harshly. And this judgment can cause you to believe that you don't deserve the opportunities and the qualifications and the accolades that you've earned, or in some way that your skills aren't worth as much as those of other people. And this can sometimes be coupled with the belief that the qualifications or the accolades that you have earned somehow aren't worthwhile anymore or they aren't praiseworthy. I don't know if you've ever had the feeling that you've striven to achieve something and then once you've got it, you felt like it came a little bit too easy, or that someone made a mistake in awarding it to you, or that maybe it isn't enough and you have to instantly start striving towards the next thing and the next thing. This syndrome doesn't let you feel any pride or joy in your accomplishments. And another problem with imposter syndrome is that our fears can be intensified by something known as pluralistic ignorance. This is the thing where we doubt ourselves in private, but we never voice our doubts because we believe that we're alone in thinking this way, because no one else talks about their worries either. This can be especially exacerbated by things like social media where people tend to present only their best achievements and their successes. People rarely publish their mistakes, their self-doubts, or their own foibles. So it becomes really difficult to know how well we're doing in comparison to our peers, whether or not they find certain tasks difficult, how often they get stuck or how often they need help, and whether or not they ever doubt themselves. So there's no easy way to dismiss this feeling that we're not doing as well as the people around us. So with a view to sharing how prevalent this issue is, I'd like to share with you some famous and incredible people who also suffer from imposter syndrome. So first up is Maya Angelou who wrote 11 books and won so many awards, but she still felt like she hadn't earned her accomplishments. She said they're going to find me out. And then the seemingly confident and talented Emma Watson said that she's afraid that people will find out that she's a fraud and that she doesn't deserve any of what she's achieved. And if you can believe it, even Albert Einstein experienced imposter syndrome. He described himself as an involuntary swindler whose work didn't deserve as much attention as it received. Talking with other people about imposter syndrome and the way that I felt it is the best way to start recognizing these fears for what they are and how you're feeling them. They're they're normal, but they're immaterial and they're certainly unfactual. And whenever I'm worrying that everyone around me is more intelligent than I am or knows more than me, or that I feel like I don't belong. I like to think of this thing that I call Schrodinger's imposter syndrome, which is the idea that somehow I have convinced myself that my peers are all far more intelligent and more accomplished and more brilliant than I am. And you know, I'll never belong amongst them. But yet also my peers are so gullible and stupid that clever me has tricked them into believing that I belong amongst them. But these two things can't exist alongside each other and be true. My logic is valuable and therefore likely so is my disbelief in myself. And we may never be able to entirely banish the feelings of imposter experience, but we can have open and frank conversations with each other with our peers with our seniors with our mentors and with our mentees and our friends even and build confidence in the facts. You are not alone in feeling this way. You are capable and you belong in your industry. So the second thing that I'd like to talk about is perfectionism. Now I was given a piece of advice when I was preparing for an interview that I'm sure a lot of you have also been given and it was this. If an interviewer ever asks you what your weaknesses are, just tell them you're a perfectionist. Yeah. So this piece of advice was given to me by my boss at the time and it's the kind of statement that makes eyes roll across the board. Interviewers and interviewees alike knows that it's a cop out answer. The view is you're not really revealing any weakness because employers want to hire perfectionists. The idea is that perfectionists do great work. They do perfect work. And it never occurred to me as I sort of naively accepted this piece of advice that I would learn to know the truth of the statement. So if you look it up, it says that perfectionism in psychology is a personality traits characterized by a person striving for flawlessness, setting high performance standards accompanied by critical self evaluations and concern regarding others evaluations, which sounds great. If I was an employer, I'd want to hire someone who strives for flawlessness and sets high standards and cares about others evaluations. They sound like a really high achiever. But perfectionism can often be a blocker to achievement. Imagine that you're constantly striving for perfection, not greatness, not excellence, actual perfection. You can't help but set yourself up to fail. Achieving perfection is not something that happens very often. And the problem is the perfectionist measure our own self-worth by how capable we are of achieving perfection, by how much we can accomplish. And if we don't accomplish these things, it can be very harsh on ourselves. The trouble is that for perfectionist, performance is intertwined with our sense of self. So when we don't succeed, we don't just feel disappointed in how we did, we feel shame about who we are. And perfectionists also engage in this thing called catastrophic, or you might hear it called black and white thinking, where everything is either perfect or it's terrible. And even the things that most people would call good enough or even great fall into the terrible category. And it can lead to things like a decision paralysis or an inability to get started on a piece of work because you can't get it exactly perfect. So it's better just to never start or never finish rather than actually getting the work out there. And the problem is that perfectionist employees have a tendency to push themselves far too hard to try and achieve this impossible dream of perfection, which can lead to anxiety. It can lead to overwork and it can lead to burnout very quickly. So what can we do as both perfectionists and friends of perfectionists to try and make our industries a safer and kinder place to work? The first thing that I'd say is allow yourself time, time away from whatever it is that's stressing you out so that you can get yourself back into a calm place. But schedule in time when you're trying to attempt it again in the future. Sometimes you just can't tackle a problem. You just can't get a piece of work done. Allow yourself the time away from it. Schedule in start time again in the future. So setting deadlines and goals is really important to perfectionists. Too much freedom for us can be quite stifling. So given a blank canvas will procrastinate or will start in a band of multiple projects. Set achievable goals, which will allow you to strive for excellence while removing the paralyzing nature of open ended tasks. Remember that perfect is the enemy of great perfectionism isn't about high standards. It's about impossible standards. Aiming for great is far better than aiming for something that's impossible. And you'll likely be surprised that not only will no one else notice the imperfections that you think are so blurringly obvious, but they'll actually think that your work is great. And also remember that you are your most, your own most harsh critic. Most people don't expect perfection from others. People just think that they do. It's okay to release imperfect work. It's even okay if somebody notices a mistake in your work. You can thank them, you learn from it and you can both move on with your lives. And the thing that has helped me the most when I've spoken about my experiences with perfectionism and with imposter syndrome is talking about it to other people. Every time I do, people tell me about their own experiences. And with the tendency for intelligence and achievement amongst highly skilled people is perhaps unsurprising that so many of us suffer from perfectionism and imposter syndrome. But the more we talk about it with our friends and our colleagues and our managers, the less stigma we'll feel around dealing with it and helping each other through it. Because we all occasionally go through rough periods and we don't have to downplay it. We can turn around to each other and validate each other's experiences. You know, tell each other, yeah, this is hard sometimes because the more open and communicative we are about mental health, the more pleasant a working experience we can create for everybody. And the reason why I'm so passionate about these things is because I went through years of suffering through depression and anxiety caused by imposter syndrome and by perfectionism. And I don't really want anyone else to go through those things because I think that by talking about it, we can increase awareness and learning about mental health. And make our industries wonderful, empowering places to be because we all deserve to be there. Thank you very much for listening to me. Great. Thank you so much Joe. That was wonderful. Great way to start our webinar. Up next is Susanna Harris. Susanna is a PhD candidate at UNC Chapel Hill studying how beneficial bacteria stick to plant roots and support plants grow. In 2018, Susanna founded the PhD depression LLC to open discussion of mental illness in higher education through creation of stories and resources. Welcome Susanna. Hi, thank you so much for just having me on here. I think that's it's just such an honor and then, and I'm coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Right. So what I want to talk to you about today, I think what Joe was saying, it really resonated with me because, first of all, yesterday actually I was thinking about perfectionism and definitely what she was saying about imposter syndrome of feeling like maybe things came too easy or maybe, you know, how tricked everyone definitely, definitely hit home. And what I want to talk to you all today is about this project that I started just over a year ago to try to highlight some of these stories of people who are dealing with everything from imposter syndrome to mental illnesses like depression and anxiety. And really the reason that I wanted to do this was the idea that we are surrounded by other people who are having these same feelings. But although we see these statistics, we don't actually normally see the people behind those statistics. So this was a paper that came out in February of 2018 that they basically found that about 40% up to 40% of graduate students were reporting symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder. And what was really interesting is that it created quite a splash a bunch of op eds came up, talking about how mental health was actually becoming a crisis in academia and why was this suddenly happening. And what was so interesting for me is that I looked into the history a little bit more and found that these numbers weren't actually surprising. A lot of papers had been done and published about this exact issue. And it found similar things where between 25 and 40% of graduate students all around the world in different studies were showing these kind of concerning numbers and rates of mental illness or severe mental health distress. And what was interesting about this is that the Nature Biotech paper, what they did, which was a little bit different, is that they actually found that if they asked people for their symptoms, if they just had them explain what issues they might be having, that's how they really got to the core of if someone was having some sort of mental health distress. And part of this is because when we talk to people, they'll often say something like, I'm not depressed. I'm in grad school. And this was actually a quote from me when a few years back I went into my doctor and I asked her for sleeping medication because I was having really hard time sleeping. And she said, I don't think your issue is sleeping. I think rather it might be anxiety or depression. And I said this that, you know, grad students are under a lot of pressure. And so I think this is one of the things that we have to start challenging this idea that not only should grad school be difficult, but it should almost be. There's a lot of part of it that sounds a bit like hazing rituals that sounds like we do not need to support our students. So the reason we came up with pH depression, the reason that it's called such is that I am a grad student who has dealt with depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember even before I was willing to call them those things. And so when these statistics come up, that paper actually came out for me while I was at a conference. And I looked around the room of about 200 people and thought there's no way 10 people in this room would understand where I'm coming from much less 50. And I realized I wouldn't notice myself in that group of people either. So there was this disconnect between the statistics we were seeing and the concern and then looking around our own environments and understanding that the people directly around us might be dealing with those sort of things. So we founded the pH depression, which was basically to fight the stigma around mental illness and higher education and we want to do this through conversation. So we talk about uncomfortable topics that started as a an Instagram handle and we've since grown from there, but we talk about things like imposter syndrome. We talk about the fact that 50% of people who start a PhD are never going to finish their PhD and this is across all disciplines and it's a similar number around the world. And talking about self care and self love and that it is not neglectful to your PhD to support yourself as a human. And in fact, it can make you more productive and a better graduate student. These are the things that we don't talk about in person that we don't feel comfortable bringing up, but really could be helpful to graduate students all around the world. So this is just a highlight of some of the people who have shared their stories. We started out and our main goal is still to share stories to show these images of people who are dealing with mental illness as they are going through graduate school, dealing with different mental health crises. And what we found was really interesting. So we have a diverse community of storytellers from totally different backgrounds. This is our current following just on Instagram where we have about 16,000 followers. And we can go ahead and look at who our audience is and it's actually only about 43% in the United States. So this has become a bit of a global movement, which is really amazing to see. And we have an idea of who is looking at this. And what's really interesting is that people around the world are resonating with what we're talking about. Which is depression, anxiety, imposter syndrome, things like OCD. These are the things that our storytellers have brought into their stories. And what's really interesting is that not only are these symptoms or these issues really common, they all have this central theme where people are hurting and felt alone. And they felt a lot of shame for these struggles and feeling like a fraud. And the resolution to most of these stories, if they are at a point where they feel like they have a resolution, is that they got help and it made things better. It was not a situation of they got help and they wanted to drop out of school or they got help and they want everything to be easier. They got help and they feel that they are in a better place now to be a graduate student than where they were before. And I'll leave this here for a moment. But what's been really inspiring to us, what has kept us going with this project, we often get questions of like, well, most of our team is they're made up of graduate students. They're everyone's volunteer on our team right now. And how do we make the time for it? And we often get these messages from people. We get them pretty regularly a couple times a week. Where people say that reading these stories really helped them, that they were able to recognize in themselves some part of the storyteller's journey and that we sometimes see this where people will say that they have actually sought professional help based on those stories of other people getting that help. And what we like to say is that mental health really affects the success in grad school. So in grad school, no matter what you're doing, things are going to fail. And you're going to feel bad. But the thing is, is if you just feel bad, you're going to end up making mistakes and feeling guilty, which might make you work more and could cause burnout, which might cause you to freak out and avoid work. And then eventually you get back to work. And this is quite a lengthy cycle. And what we think is that with the right support, when things fail, a student might be able to take time off, whether that's mentally or just taking some time out of lab, and that this will actually enable them to jump back into their work and be more successful in the long run. And so we go by the system where there's five stages of getting help for a mental health issue. First, someone needs to recognize that they might be experiencing a problem or that things could maybe get better with some help. And then they have to decide to address the problem. And this is actually a very difficult process. There's the stigma and shame around it and even just recognizing that maybe things could get better and maybe I want that. Then the student or the person in question, academic of any level needs to find those resources and actually start putting them into practice to change their situation. And then finally, a really important aspect of this is actually maintaining these behaviors. So what we think is really important is to break the stigma around these sort of things. And where pH depression is aimed is at these first points, but we are trying now to reach out and find ways to provide resources and help students along this journey. So the questions, the questions that we get a lot are, you know, how can I help how can I help pH depression or how can I help a friend. And we say, you know, watch for signs and symptoms, ask questions and form yourself. There's a lot of great resources online of how to spot symptoms of mental illness. Share and support these resources, but also check in with your friends and check in with yourself. If you're not in a good place or if you're maybe in a not so stable position, you're not going to be able to help the people around you. And this is our idea of you can't pour from an empty glass. You can't help others if you yourself are needing more help. So I will turn it back over to you, but I'm very excited to talk with you more about how all of this is going and just where we can go from here. Great. Thank you so much, Susanna. And just a reminder to the attendees that if you have any questions for the speakers, you can write your questions in the question box here or tweet to us on Twitter. Now I think something that you highlighted Susanna is that it gets things get better. And so that leads us to our next speaker, Michael, who is the director at it gets brighter. Michael is also a candidate in global health science and epidemiology at the University of Oxford. It gets brighter is a nonprofit organization that supports young people who are experiencing mental health issues by sharing video messages of hope and support. Thank you for joining us today, Michael. Thanks so much for the wonderful intro, Brianne. I'm really excited to be here and I'm really thankful that you all are hosting this panel because I mean, mental health is extremely important issue and especially young people. The statistics are about 75% of mental health issues arise before the age of 24 and 25. So, in that period is often a period when people are starting graduate school in most countries, and I think that it's a really critical time to, first of all, raise awareness and stimulate conversation as our other two panelists have talked about, but also to kind of take action and refer people to resources where they can get more help. Yeah, so the the it gets brighter project started kind of through inspiration from this initiative called it gets better phrase that was used just earlier, and the it gets better project. The idea is to kind of show people young people in particular who are experiencing feelings of doubt or hopelessness who are importantly LGBTQ plus that things do get better for them as they grow older and feel more comfortable with their identity and a society has become more accepting as well in the process. And the idea behind it gets brighter was really inspired by the gets better project where we essentially asked people to to share their stories of how they have they have gone through mental health issues and how they are living full and fulfilling lives with a mental health condition. And we asked them to share their stories in the video format. And then we then disseminate these videos to help young people who are experiencing mental health issues often for the first time. And one of the things about mental health is that a particular depression is that when people are going for it through at the first time there's this kind of this phenomenon called generalization of the narrative, which is the idea that oh you know I'm feeling depressed now. And therefore, you know, I have always felt depressed in the past and I will always feel depressed in the future. And in the process people kind of lose sight of the of the light, and there is there is light in the future. There is hope. And our mission is to show people that things do get brighter for them. So, so yeah I have open here our website. And you can see we have a collection of videos from all across different ages, genders and and profession so our goal is to kind of create a video library that has something for everyone who visits our site. And in particular, since we are talking about mental health and early career academia and research. We actually have a, we have a tag on our site for student. So if we do a quick search with that. I have a backup version on YouTube. I can't seem to find the video I was looking for, but there's this video I found on our website from someone named Belinda Platt, and she is a researcher, and she's generously shared her story through it gets brighter. And she's one of hundreds of people who have. So we'll just play this video real quick. Depression and anxiety are not only the focus of my research, but also a topic close to my heart. I had my first panic attack when I was 12 years old on a family holiday. Out of nowhere I thought I was dying. I felt close to fainting. I locked myself in the bathroom and just screamed. Eventually it passed, but worrying about it have me again, then I started to get symptoms of epiphoobia. I avoided situations where I might get anxious and couldn't easily get home, like being on trains, planes, buses, and I was scared of being away from my closest family. Both of which they seemed okay for a child, but as a teenager and then a young adult made me feel stupid and alone. At uni I used the counseling service, which really helped me. Things were better for a few years. And then last year when things got harder, I've picked up the courage to go for psychotherapy. I've learned that anyone can get anxiety and depression, even people who know all the theory. I told some friends and colleagues that I was having therapy and realized just how many people I know have also done so at some point. I realized that for someone who has a genetic vulnerabilities to disorder, I was actually doing pretty well. I found some skills that helped me when I was feeling anxious, like making a playlist of music that calms me. I learned not to be hard on myself and to reward myself every time I did something that was hard for me, however easy it seemed for other people. It took me a year, but I also learned to accept the fact that I have anxiety. I'm now feeling stronger than ever. I want to encourage other people going through something similar to seek help. Tell your friends how vulnerable you actually feel. Go to your GP even if you're not sure what's wrong. And remember it's not something you'll make worse by talking about or seeking help for. And once you do come out of the other side, share your experiences so we can help to reduce the stigma of mental illness. Even if it encourages just one other person to think about seeking help, it will have been worth it. It really does get brighter. Alrighty. Yeah, so yeah, thanks for watching the video everyone. Yeah, so that's just one example of one of the video messages on our site. By telling these individual stories, we hope to basically give people who are experiencing mental health issues a way to access a resource with a pretty low barrier to entry. Because one of the big issues that people encounter that Susanna and Joe have brought up already is that when you're going through something like depression or anxiety for the first time, the last thing you often want to do is to reach out for help. You know, people kind of tend to turn inwards in those situations. And by making these resources available online in a digital format, I think that they can become a lot more accessible, not just to people locally, but also around the world. So we've really been trying to leverage digital technology to connect people and share these stories. And hopefully also give them tips and have people creating these videos, share, you know, what was the key thing that made things brighter for you? What was that turning point? What did you do? Did you go to that yoga class or did you listen to that playlist of music that really cheered you up? And coming up with these kind of concrete recommendations and also forwarding people on to resources such as the, you know, Suicide Prevention Hotline or the recently launched Shout in the UK. Resources like that that are kind of higher on the on the scale of intervention, but maybe necessary. So yeah, that's kind of a summary of what we do that gets brighter. Great. Thank you, Michael. That was an excellent overview of a really wonderful initiative that gets brighter. So thank you to our speakers. We are now going to turn to the Q&A. So please any of the attendees tweet to us if you have any questions, let us know which speaker you'd like to answer your question or fix for everyone or post in the question box beside on the on the right hand dashboard. So to get us started, I have a question from Michael. What is the use of social media or other digital tools affect mental health and how can we best leverage these tools to improve mental health? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. Yeah, these these kind of digital platforms and social media in particular, after a double-edged sword. So what's interesting is that social more social media use can be correlated with both positive mental health but also negative mental health issues. For instance, when when people are going through depressive phases, they often send fewer messages on texting or social media platforms. At the same time, these platforms also can contribute to the sense of fear of missing out of FOMO and also contribute to imposter syndrome because people do present quite a curated version of themselves on these platforms, right? So when you log in to Facebook and scroll through your news feed, you might see, oh, you know, so and so is on vacation in this beautiful place and meanwhile, you know, I'm sitting here in the lab pipetting or growing bacteria. Things like that can really take a toll on mental health. So I think one of the keys is figuring out how these digital platforms can be used for good rather than for high. And I guess it gets brighter itself as a digital platform and we really pay attention to kind of how we curate our videos to make sure that videos send a positive message and create kind of this positive feeling in the viewer. And that's kind of human creation is something that's really important, I think, which services like Facebook and Twitter don't necessarily do. So I think that actually, in reality, we should have more kind of positive mental health regulation, perhaps some of these social media companies. But that's my personal thing. The next question is for Joe discussing. So if you if the question is if you find yourself suffering from perfectionism or imposter syndrome. What are some of your favorite resources for the, for someone to reach out to or or to identify where their issues coming from. There's a bunch of great resources online for just for reading about things like some of the things I mentioned about perfectionism like black and white thinking and catastrophic thinking and a few things to sort of check off the list. As far as things that can that can help you out. You mentioned social media and it's interesting because it is one of the things that can lead people to a more sort of depressive state because you see these people that are leading this great life in comparison to the real life that you're perceiving. Plus, we quite often follow people who are in a similar industry to us and we have a tendency to look at them and say like, oh my goodness they know everything whereas I only know this base level, and we forget that they're experts and they're journalists. And so I remembering to limit your time on social media and limit your time with things like email and measuring out a lot of work hours and rest hours are things that are phones allow us to do these days are operating systems both Android and iOS both come with settings where you can you can either turn off access to apps in certain hours, or you can grayscale out the apps that you don't want to be using during certain hours if you want to limit your time on Instagram or Twitter, or you want to stop yourself from reading your work emails in the middle of the night. These are all things that you can, you can set management methods in place, which I think are really important for managing those tendencies that people with imposter syndrome and perfectionism both have to do too much work. So, yeah, using using the tools that your technology gives you a great and also using things like timing techniques like if you heard of the Pomodoro technique, where you you chop up your day into 20 minute with break periods in between and you know that you're going to focus on work for those periods and have the break period so it stops you from doing things like procrastination or just general failure to concentrate for a long period of time, which is sometimes difficult for people who are in that depressive or that panic state. So, having actually a lot of sets of of your day is really helpful. Is that an answer to your question? Yeah, no, I think that's that is great advice for people who are find themselves suffering from perfectionism and imposter syndrome. The next question is for Susanna. And actually this comes from me because we had a little bit of discussion over Twitter about the medical student well being index and whether or not this could be adopted in graduate schools, do you want to say Yeah, so the medical student well being index I kind of stumbled upon because I was I was looking for were there ways for for students to quickly analyze if they might be at risk for certain things if they might be struggling with burnout or imposter syndrome or even things like anxiety and depression. And what was really interesting is that there exists this platform for medical students and medical medical faculty, where they fill out a handful of questions, and it not only pops them up with a kind of a dial looking thing you can think about it as you know the engine in your car when it gets overheated pops up with that for the things that they might be at risk of, and then also gives this whole list of resources for them to go and find. And it's really, really useful I pulled it up and I'm not a medical student I'm a graduate student but the resources were not specific to medical students necessarily there are a lot of things about meditation and mindfulness. And I think something like that could be very easily adopted actually for graduate students. And something that we are looking into right now, where all of these stories that come to us. They have more in common across the globe, then they do with students who are coming from the same undergraduate university so even though they're in the same university. They have more in common with their peers around the world. And so I think, given this information. There is a space that we could really be doing a service to our graduate students to actually monitor their own wellness and well being because in general grad students are really hard working we really want to be successful. And having the opportunity to use something like that, I think could benefit a lot of people and not just find out, you know where there might be a problem but it's really, really important to also have options for them for those resources. Yeah, I think that's great and I think it is definitely promising and that we could use that model in graduate school it feels like there's no reason why we shouldn't be implementing that same model in graduate school. So another question is, and this could be for anybody. Have you noticed that imposter syndrome is more common amongst minorities, for, for example, women or people of color. Does this come from societal judgments and how can we combat this. And I think this is a really important question because I also see from women and stem who often feel like they're chosen for a panel or they're chosen for an award or they're chosen for a job, because they need a woman. And so I'm sure this is the case for lots of different minorities as diversity in science, particularly diversity in stem is growing in in awareness and importance. So does anyone want to speak to that about that. I'm happy to jump in on that. So I heard this statistic of the day that said that two thirds of women in stem feel imposter syndrome. Yeah. And when you hear that you're just like, goodness, we need to be talking about this more. But the other thing if you research imposter syndrome, they was discovered by a woman who was feeling it and sort of went around her she was working in a lab. She went around the lab and sort of asked a bunch of other women whether they felt this way and sort of went like, oh, you know, maybe this isn't just me. Maybe we need to start doing some research in this. So it's definitely something that affects women. I don't know the numbers for other minorities, but it definitely the feeling that you're different from everybody else and that you don't fit in is what leads into this feeling of imposter syndrome. So I can very much believe that if you are the minority group, your feelings of imposter syndrome would be increased. And as far as things that we can do to make it better for minorities. I think we talking about it is super important. Having the kind of support groups that Michael and Susanna have would make such a difference. And when I started my career in tech, I had zero support, I had no idea who to talk to about these things and not only that I was afraid to talk to anybody because I thought I was the only one. So really amplifying this message and socializing the idea that many people feel this way, and that's okay. And, you know, yes, it is hard, but we can all get through it if we help each other out. I think it's just the most important thing that we can do and also socializing reaching out for help. It took me a very long time to figure out that I really needed to go and talk to a therapist. And once I did, it was revolutionary for me, but it took me over a year to accept that fact. Thanks. So we have another question for anybody on the panel. And it's a tricky one. Is quitting a job or PhD ever the answer? I'll jump on that one. We have had a number of people tell stories who have left with a master's or who have left without any terminal degree. And they're, I mean, it's a mixed bag. They feel bad about it, but they realize that what is success to them, like what that means to them might not be continuing in this program. I think what's really interesting, one of the things that I've been talking about with people is that if you worked anywhere else for five years and you completed many hurdles and you took on a whole bunch of new tasks, you worked with people, you published papers, and you have tons of technical skills, you have good recommendations. That's a huge success. If you can work in one place for five years and do really well, that's a success. And it's really interesting that in graduate school, it's seen as a failure that we don't see the progress as a part of success. We only see that terminal degree as success. And one of the other things that we get back a lot is that postdocs and people who have just graduated oftentimes about four to six months. I don't know why it's that time. But about four to six months later, they suddenly have a bit of a personal crisis where they expected to feel that they finally belong, that they finally measured up, that they finally were successful. And that feeling doesn't come. The issues that they were facing in graduate school follow them along. And I guess I would challenge people to think of what success is and think about what the right career choice is based on what you want and based on how you measure your own success. And to see all of the things you've done in graduate school, not as a waste of time, but as personal training where you have built a lot of skills. And maybe pursuing the end of that degree is actually going to push you out of science in the end or put you in a place where you don't feel successful. So I think there's a really good reasons for leaving in a lot of cases. Yeah, I agree. Just finding the right path for you. And just because you started a PhD and decide that it's not the right path for you, it's not a failure. You've identified maybe something, something better. But I do think that people get stuck thinking I started it. I cannot fail by leaving, but really it's not necessarily a failure to go on. I would love to add, you know, that 50% leaving rate 50% of people don't finish their PhD. I think there's something to be said for dead men tell no tales. The people who leave are not here in academia saying it's fine. It's fine. I left and nobody thinks I'm an awful failure. And so without that feedback without hearing these stories and without even knowing that 50% of people leave. It becomes this really big point of shame. And I'm actually hoping that social media can have a beneficial side to that where people can connect and be like, Oh, they left and they're happy or you know they left and they have a lot of regrets either one is totally valid. Yeah, exactly. And just just jumping off of that. And I think that was a wonderful answer. And there was this project recently, I think in the past couple years that someone started called the CV of failures. Yeah, if you are familiar with this, basically, a professor was thinking, you know, people only show their successes they never show their failures. And I think, you know, like connecting with people in that kind of a space where discussion about failures is an option can really break down the barriers that's imposter syndrome and potentially leaving academia present. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was a great initiative and it was, it was kind of fun to see because again you don't see the failures. Okay, so a final question. So a lot of the initiatives that Michael and Susanna were talking about are really trying to identify others in your peer group or in your networks who are also suffering so you don't feel alone. But what about people who want to use social media as a tool for building support, but who would prefer to remain anonymous because of fear of stigma. Can you recommend any platforms, or any ways to connect for people who want to stay anonymous. So I had this, I had this question come into my DMs recently of a woman who she was dealing with a lot of issues in her department and she wanted a way to connect with people, but she didn't want to have her name associated other people in the department or on Twitter. And she asked and I think it's not a horrible idea to you can create a second Twitter account, you can create a Twitter account that is a list of numbers or a couple things put up a really basic avatar and engage with people that way. And I think that if you're in a situation where you can't be open about what's happening to you. I don't, I don't think I don't see any problem with that I don't see that as disingenuous I see that as understanding the kind of blowback you might get if if you are open about it so I don't think it's a I don't think it's a bad idea. I don't know what do you all think about that. And I agree, I agree and and to add on to that there's this, there are some other services out there as well that offer kind of confidential counseling support. So a lot of universities will have kind of peer supporters who are confidential who you can you can meet with in person or even message. There's this new nonprofit called seven cups that has about they have a community of about 300,000 volunteer peer supporters around the world, and anybody can just log on to the service and have a private confidential chat they also have support groups on there. And yeah I mean, like I said I said you can go on these services, maybe even make a fake account if you're if you're really concerned and just get support through that. Thank you for answering the questions that have come in. If anyone has any further questions please tweet to us after we'll try to answer as many questions as we can following the webinar. But now I invite our panelists to offer final remarks. Joe. Any last words here. I think that we've all been saying you know if you are suffering from any of these, the things that we've talked about today, make sure that you're talking to other people about it, that you're not keeping it to yourself. And, and yet I can consider talking to a professional about it because it absolutely changed my life. So I yeah I'd like to echo what Joe said and and add to it that you know you don't have to be feeling or even ready to take on that label of that. You might be struggling it could just be a case where you think well maybe, maybe things could be better or maybe I could be more productive if I wasn't crashing out at the end of the week or maybe my anxiety about making a PowerPoint is really is really impacting me, and seeing that more as a coaching opportunity you know a therapist is in a lot of ways a life coach and you can even find life coaches, and just like a physical trainer we see having a physical trainer as this great thing to do, where they can have weaknesses that you don't notice they know techniques that you don't know of and they can guide you through becoming stronger in areas that you need that a therapist is just the same thing. And the level of therapy the level of pure support that you need is going to is going to vary, but I agree with a lot of what y'all are saying of that asking for help is not a weakness it's actually very difficult and so feel about being able to do that. So true. Michael. Yeah, I totally agree with what Joe and Santa said. First of all asking for help and also, you know not being afraid to well to connect the people and to look for sources of support but also I think there's a lot that we can do as a community to make it more welcoming for people and to kind of act as an ally, even if you aren't experiencing mental health issues yourself to reach out to friends who you haven't talked to in a while people who you think, you know might be going through something, just reach out to them it can be as simple as a message and, you know, putting those feelers out there really reduces the barrier that someone in need might feel in terms of getting help so I just think, yeah, kind of creating a more inclusive community and using social media and digital tools that are in the 21st century is really important for mental health. Yeah. Well, thank you to our speakers and to everyone who tuned in today and contributed to the discussion. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about mental health support for early career researchers. Our next ECR Wednesday webinar will be held on June 27, and we'll be discussing language barriers to scientific communication. We hope to see you then, and we wish everyone a great day. Thank you.