 Hi everyone, welcome to this online short course Mind Your Head, which will be all about how to take care of your mental well-being in academia. I'm Eleanor Maraisinger and I'm a postdoc at Econema Supérieure in Paris. I have been involved with in mental health since a few years, when I decided to start writing this blog series Mind Your Head, together with Anne. And yeah, since then we've been working on that and we thought to take it to the next level and to continue this dialogue about mental health. So that's why we decided to organize this short course. And we decided to organize this short course around mental health because we believe it's a very important topic in academia that deserves more attention. There's more and more research showing that many people in academia have problems, have suffer from mental health issues. This can be anxiety or depression or emotional exhaustion. And it even seems that such problems are much more common in academia than in other disciplines. So for this webinar today we invited five panelists who will give short talks about different topics within the overall theme of mental health. They'll introduce different types of mental health issues, share their own experiences, or give you advice on how you can take care of your own mental well-being. So in the end we also take some time to discuss the current corona crisis and how it impacts your mental health, but mainly give you advice on how you can manage yourself better in these strange but challenging times. So before we start I would like to introduce all of our speakers. First we have Anna Blymarkers who is an assistant professor at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands. Anna has been actively involved in writing the EGU blog series Mind Your Head which was one of the inspirations for this short course. She recently wrote a blog post about how to manage yourself during this corona crisis so that's definitely worth checking out. Then we have Christopher Jackson who is a professor at Imperial College in London. He's a great advocate for early career scientists and he's a champion of open and inclusive research environment. Chris dealt with depression during his PhD and he hopes that sharing his own experiences will make it easier for other people to reach out. Our third speaker is Michael Covener Safene Zins who is a lecturer in research and development at the University of the West of Scotland. Safene has been involved in the EGU both as a division and union by a representative for early career scientists and she's also been involved in organizing the ECS great debate last year which was all around mental health issues as well. She was diagnosed a few years ago with MS which made it extra challenging for her to take care of herself. She's a great advocate for academics with chronic illness and she will talk more about that later during her own talk. Then we have Jean Holloway who is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa in Canada. So good morning Jean because for her it's early morning. She was recently interviewed by the crisis for a division blog around mental health where she openly shares her own experiences and advice around mental health. By talking about her personal journey she hopes that she can inspire others to learn more about how to take care of their own mental health. And then finally we invited Julie Tiding to join us. Julie is a psychiatrist and researcher at the Vue Medical Centre in Amsterdam. So he basically studies researchers so he might be able to give us a slightly different perspective on all this. He also wrote a book which is called Scientists on the Sofa in which he gives you advice on how you can deal with certain problems within academic working environment. It not only exists in Dutch but it will be available in English soon as well. So those are all the speakers that we will have today. I'm really happy that you can join us today and I look forward to hearing all of your talks. So before we start I would like to give a final remark about this webinar. We're not live but you can still ask questions and give comments either on one of the specific talks or in general and you can do that by typing them in the comments section below and then we'll do our best to get back to you about that. So the first talk is by Anna Vleimrakers and she will talk about the imposter syndrome and the feeling of I'm not good enough. Well I need to share my screen okay. The reason why I want to talk about this is because it's something that I see a lot around me and that I suffer from in more or less measure depending on other circumstances and I think especially in academia the imposter syndrome is easy. It's something that easily takes root because we quantify ourselves usually with numbers. So these are my numbers in the scientific way. 2015 was the year that I defended my PhD. At the moment I have published or co-published 14 papers. I have nine on the Google Scholar Age Index, the Holy Grill of the scientists. I have obtained several grants including a very prestigious one in the Netherlands from the Dutch Science Foundation and I captured a unicorn quite recently on February 1st this year. I became a tenure track assistant professor at TU Delft. So generally speaking in academia I should know that I am somehow good enough. I think these numbers do not tell the entire story. If I would choose numbers myself to present myself I would go for these numbers. Two is the ideal number of espresso in a day. I would say that one is the ideal one time a week is the ideal amount of sports per week. At the moment I'm on a strict corona regime and I send myself out for a walk every day and I bake in an average week one sourdough bread but in these corona times it's maybe three or four breads just to keep busy and I travel a lot. I have a long distance relationship and I am in academia and I fly around the world and around Europe and last year I made at least 15 if not more flights and I enjoy travel a lot even though in this day and age you can wonder if you should travel this much. Still despite all this despite theoretically being accomplished I still think thoughts along these lines regularly. I am not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not efficient enough. Others are better than me and I'm by far not the only one who thinks thoughts like this. So if this were a real life session I would say raise your hand if you think any of these things or something similar like this very often and I would say I do think this. So this is known as the imposter syndrome. It got published as first as a term in 1987 I think and it's something that gets worse under stress. So corona times of course is a time that it's under stress and you could even wonder am I managing the corona times good enough. Other moments it gets worse job interviews the first time the first day the first week or months on a new job during networking events so conferences such as EGU would have been this year maybe online is easier or even it becomes for some people more difficult because you have less information and also when you reach a milestone so for speaking for myself is the moment I got a prestigious grant instead of feeling this as a confirmation it's good enough it actually felt as the moment that I had to start to prove myself also when getting my unicorn when getting my tenure track position you actually run the risk of having the feeling that then you need to start working whereas actually that's of course not the case. Studies show that there's two types of responses to stress situations the fight or flight response. So in academia you could say that the fight responses that you work harder you work longer hours you work more and more and more with any potential dangers after that. The flight response is that you don't even start doing what you want to do or when you do and you actually succeed at them that you trivialize them or even that you manage the situation such that you don't need to start and you sabotage yourself and you don't get where you actually want to go. So ways to basically do internal self-management and things that help me and others around me I call it know your internal asshole like your brain can be really mean. You know the ways in which your brain is mean so when your brain is being mean to you you just think okay it's just my brain it will be better another day. You're not the only one who thinks things like this so if you talk about it you find out that one it's quite normal to not always feel as if you're great and two you might not be right you are actually a great person. Not everything that you think is necessarily true so it could be that you think you can see into the future so if A happens then B must happen it's not necessarily true or that you think that you know what other people are thinking which you do not unless they tell you and other tricks like that. Something someone reminded me recently of is that it's important to not compare yourself to others every single one of us is unique we all have our own qualities and it's very easy to see what other people are good at and to forget what you yourself are good at. We are all different we are not one alike and there's also not one person that is the right kind of person to be we are all unique we are all good enough. Some days it really doesn't work out some days you're just in a funk well that's also okay on those days just try and relax just deal with it as well as you can and then tomorrow is a new day a better day you can just start over try again and one thing that I think is very important with any of these kind of things you can get a long way with internal self-management but if it really doesn't work out you should not be ashamed to find professional help when you need it I mean when you break your leg you also don't self-manage it and hope it will go away so that is my talk and maybe it helps you I hope so okay great thanks a lot and I recognize a lot of the things you say I was I was I was looking at these scientific numbers that you were you're showing in the beginning and personally if I look at the numbers like that I immediately get insecure because I start comparing myself they're designed like that so do you think we should completely move away from using these type of numbers to to show ourselves in academic environment or do you think we should just try to look at them differently and just not take them as as directly as they are I don't think you can get out of moving away from them completely um I do really like at the moment the Dutch governments and the Dutch funding institutions are moving away from things like impact factors of journals or the age index and they're more going towards individual so if an individual paper made an impact for example because it was cited somewhere but also maybe because it was blocked about or maybe because it was posted and reposted and reposted on social media so they're taking a broader view towards a criteria of success than then is traditional at the moment and I think that's a very good way I do think that I mean it is still a way of quantifying so I personally don't think we will move away from it completely nor do I think we should and there there's a lot of research going on at the moment to improve those criteria we we there's a there's this for example the Hong Kong manifesto is really an add-on here it's very it's really refreshing to read about other criteria that we can use about very important skills academic skills that needs to be assessed and and and are relatively easy to quantify so the Dutch are taking the lead in this okay thank you so much let's move on to our next talk which will be by Christopher Jackson and he's going to talk about the importance of physical activity during stressful periods hi yeah my name is Chris Jackson I'm an Imperial College Professor of Base Analysis so I'm a geoscientist and I entitled my talk move your body because I guess there's a disclaimer at the start of this talk is that I'm a geoscientist I'm interested in base analysis Volcano's being one of those things earthquakes landscape evolution and I'm not actually Mo Farah the British long distance Olympic athlete right so I am a geologist and I'm not a professional athlete but I'm very passionate about physical activity but nothing I'm going to say in the next few minutes is really qualified by the fact I have a degree in sports psychology or a degree in physical education or any of those things this is a very personal view and based largely around the activity I like most running around why I value it and why I think it's a really valuable thing especially for academics and especially in the present coronavirus times we find ourselves so I'm not him so growing up I was kind of a small child and this is me age of about two I was a very active child anyway if I speak to my mum and dad I was always running around and I was very physically active growing up so this is a bit about the history as to why I am like I am today and I played sport all the time all the time like five times a week I was playing sport I was either playing football and I played to a fairly decent standard for my town and my county and or I was always doing athletics as well so for me even when looking back now even as a small child who was kind of you know academically okay but not one of the most gifted kids in class I needed that release I needed to be moving my body as well as I was kind of working my mind in class so there was this kind of very opposite experience I was having by doing two different things you know these are very different things one athletics is a very individual pursuit as is running like I'll talk about in a moment but football is a very team-based you know activity it's very physical but it brings a very different set of experiences to you that you don't get from doing an individual pursuit like running and that's what I'm kind of going to focus on now the thing I like doing most which is running so why is it important for me as an academic well as an academic we spend we often have a lot of balls in the air right and there's a lot of ways like Anna spoke about of measuring ourselves and worrying and stress and strain and just being generally concerned about our performance what I really like about running is it allows us to step outside of that very claustrophobic space we often find ourselves in and have a very different experience so for me the way I always describe this to people is running I have two different responses and I'm running one is I'm thinking of a hard scientific problem and I can't get my hand in my head around it until I start running and while I'm running there's my body's aching but I'm allowed to think you know I mind that that point you can be doing some work and some hard work on a bit of science the other extreme is I've had a scientific problem that's been bothering me so much I can't sleep and it's bothering me and it's eating away at me and it's all the things Anna referred to that eventually kind of grinds you down but then when I go running I can't hold a thought it's really nice I can hear the birds I can see the people I can feel the wind I have a very different response at those times so running I'm never sure which of those two responses and I'm going to have but I value both of those responses when I'm out running the other reason for me I find running are very beneficial activities because physically feeling good then mentally I feel able to kind of to work as well so I actually if I'm feeling physically well myself and you know and weight loss is one vanishing for me is one vanishingly small part of exercise it's kind of you know most of it is about how you feel about yourself and how you view yourself but for me feeling fit and strong and active is a really important part of my mental well-being so I get I draw a lot of positivity from the active physical exercise and this is why I often preach quite almost religiously about how valuable it is because people don't they seem to view it often as purely a physical activity and engagement whereas there's a lot of mental benefits we have from exercising and so coming through to what you know what is it like now and I don't know if anybody out there what uses Strava and like measures like how far they run how fast they run and just keep a fitness log really so you know that we've got a flatten the curve but for somebody who's physically very active one concern was maintaining your curve okay what I'm showing here two curves one is from March and the orange with the grey ones from March and the orange one is from April so the the orange dot at the top is this morning and you know I just want to talk through these graphs to show you how I've tried to engage in my physical activity through all the benefits I've just outlined during the coronavirus so that's my background trajectory there at the beginning of March it's quite a gentle trajectory I've left the you know I've left the scales off here because I think that you know how far we do things how fast we do things and not why we do it this was a race I did I did a half marathon so you can see a steepling there and I did a few intense sessions just before I then had my post race blues where I eat cake and watch TV and drink beer and sit on the sofa because you know as cool as exercising is you need to let your body recover as you need to let your mind recover as well when you've really worked that hard and then lockdown happened and for me the the the response was shown there you can see that trajectory significantly steepens um from the background and you can see as you go through April if anything there's bits of that early part of April curve where the the curve is steeper than it's ever been and so for me one way of really partly separating work and home life was to actually kind of do these false commutes people are doing so actually to do some exercise in the morning to get the heart rate up to add a little bit of distance between home and work or the virtual work which is actually in my daughter's bedroom at the moment but just to make it feel like I had some movement in my day and to give me and to give me some a bit of a workout so that was kind of me maintaining my curve but I thought these graphics and the analytics behind this I'd really love to go to all of the academics who are very physical acting and see what their curves look like as they enter lockdown and just now to finish I just want to talk a bit about like you know why people should get into running and what maybe stops them doing any sort of physical activities academics one is we're just really busy often we're just too busy to exercise and that then has a double effect right because we're physically allowing ourselves maybe not to feel as great as we could because we're mentally being challenged all the time at work and we feel angst around that and these sorts of images here don't help either a lot of people who don't do running or don't do any physical activity probably have these images in their mind of the uber ultra athletes and everybody thinks well if I'm not going to be like that or have the runner's brain or not make the front cover of the frontier runners like what's the point of engaging in that but in reality exercise and running is this you know this is this this is like I've done nine marathons and thirty five half marathons now and all the people I see in the waiting area and on the race look like this a broad cross section of people different shapes sizes ages and genders everything and it's and it's a wonderful thing and and there's so much humanity as well as the physicality in exercise you get to meet amazing people and see them doing unbelievable things and and if you didn't need that before coronavirus you probably want it now right I think it's a really great thing to to be able to go out and you see it in my local park lots of people exercising it's bursting at the seams now with exercises people running and that's a problem in itself but it shows the value people probably innately had in them you know the importance exercise had for them that they weren't able to utilize until a global pandemic so just to finish if you're interested you know like and I want to get into this what should you be listening for just get started you know trying to think about why you want to exercise and make sure your progress is slow often people say I want to run and they go out and try and run a marathon in the afternoon and it's not going to happen it's physically impossible think about easing into it with things like the run walk method and I'm talking about running here but I've got one final slide about that but you know there's lots of ways of just getting you off the sofa by walking briskly for 30 seconds and walking slowly for 30 seconds and walking briskly for 30 seconds again and so on and you will be surprised at how I've seen people build through very low level engagement at the start to be engaged fully with running don't get discouraged it's always hard even if you're starting out but even if you're an experienced runner like me there are times when you feel just not your best explore new places it's a really great way to to look around and at conferences academic conferences is where I take my running shoes the first things I pack is so I can go and explore cities and look around under my own steam and then a proper technique is one thing this runners world sort of guidance says and I've left the hyperlink at the bottom of the slide there once if you don't like running because a lot of people just say I can't run I don't run I've never been able to run or some combination there are there are lots of other ways of moving your body cycling and you can do cycling as a lone engagement as well if you don't like being around people on the start line or running in the city you can ride in isolation and that is you probably don't want to be in isolation too much at the moment I'm not sure but it is a really great thing to do swimming as well if you don't feel like your joints you know people have knee and in existing injuries that stop them from exercising and this is another opportunity and then there's also sports where you engage with other people either you know one to one level like racket sports the way you engage in running clubs as well where there'd be a number of people my final comment is just to say a lot of what I'm talking about here is things which are which are more readily available to people who are able to go out and do these sorts of forms of exercise so the question for our community is or anybody who likes exercising how do people can't do these things physically engage as well in activities and I know some people are on this webinar now who have very good views on that and have a lot more experience because I'm able bodied you know I haven't absolutely no sort of impairment apart from being asthmatic so I'd be interested to learn about how I could communicate this message to those people as well so thank you thanks a lot Chris um I don't know in the UK but in Paris they actually forbid running during the day because there are so many people running that now you can only run in the early morning early evening um is there anyone who has a question or a comment about Chris's talk I just wanted to comment on um obviously the last point um Chris made around you know what if you can't run for you know or leave your house or for whatever reason there are um there's a big movement at the moment around kind of chair exercises so um especially the mass society so like chair yoga or chair pilates so um which you could do you know from a wheelchair as well for example and one of my friends um actually started using a hand bike so she has a hand bike at home and it's just really about getting your heart rate up for the kind of cardio and fitness so I think it's with the same as like technology helping us you know connect in ways there's more and more things actually kind of coming out that make exercise um more available at home and one of things for example I got recently as a turbo trainer so I can have the bike um at home since we're only allowed out for one hour um we kind of set that up in the house so my question would be uh how do you motivate yourself to go out at the end of the day on a day that it's rainy wind tired you don't want to do you have any tips or tricks for that how do you convince yourself to go out when you're kind of not in the mood I don't I'm you know like even physical exercises like me there are days like that right you can't you can't make it work you can't lift yourself off the sofa or drag yourself away from the TV you know the you know the kid is ill or you know your child's or there's some moving part in your life which means you can't do it and you can't like you said you can't beat yourself up about the times you aren't going you can only fully engage in the times you can so there are times and why so yeah there's no um silver bullet to this there's no magic answer to how to get yourself off the couch sometimes you just need to stay on the couch what I would say absolutely the times I have forced myself to go outside when it's rainy and cold and I'm feeling exhausted I have never been on a run where I have not then felt better after making that leap out of the door I can honestly 100% say that but even having said that when I'm sitting on the sofa I'm thinking I know if I go for this run it's gonna be great for me I just won't go I'll just like open a beer and sit on the couch because you can't you know you just like this hard sometimes I think I have the same would you have with running but then we're just walking yeah yeah whatever it is whatever it is like walking cycling swimming you know whatever it is people have that is a is a is a is a welcome distraction and a valuable distraction from academia which is principally around the application of the mind with some application of personality as well hopefully and some you know humility and humanity right because we know the people who just apply their minds what they may be like and but yeah anything that gets you out like Steph says you know whatever it is getting a heart rate up physically feeling better about yourself you know you can do like low heart rate low heart rate activities are also valuable and but yeah it's awesome I do a lot of yoga and actually what the teachers usually say is the hardest thing is to arrive on the map absolutely truly this means the same after which you always feel amazing and yeah okay so let's move on to the next talk she's by Stephanie she talks about how to adjust to academic life living with a chronic illness I'm Stephanie as you can see I'm no longer in in geoscience I change careers to research development and I'm going to talk a little bit about that in this talk as well and as Eleanor already said I was diagnosed with MS and I'm going to tell you in the next kind of slide when that happened and what that was like and before I start though and I know some people have that done already so here's my disclaimer I'm sharing my personal lived experience and especially for talks like this I think it's really important that any lived experience is valuable and is real so there's no kind of right or wrong if this has happened to you this is what happened to you and these are my opinions and my views and with a lot of other things this is a never-ending learning curve so there might be things I might be getting wrong I'm here to learn about that as well not just about myself but also about others mental health in general and how other people deal with all sorts of aspects around mental well-being so here are my academic stops as you can see started out with kind of geoscience also worked for the British Geological Survey after my PhD I did some postdocs at Harriet Watt and then as you can see there at the end of 2018 I decided to change careers and this was partly but not mainly due to the fact that during my second postdoc at Harriet Watt I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and looking back actually the diagnosis was tough but actually the 10 months leading up to getting diagnosed looking back I probably should have gotten help at that time and some of the things that kind of resonate with me with the imposter syndrome that Ann talked about is that I just didn't feel ill enough to go and get help because I was just like at the time also I don't think I recognized that I was probably in some sort of kind of high functioning depression and time-sight obviously as with a lot of these things I'm now a lot better at kind of maybe recognizing some of these things and getting help a bit quicker but I did get help kind of once I had the diagnosis even though that was tricky as well I'm going to share that in the next couple of slides and the first thing after diagnosis and kind of a little bit before that was the there's this new uncertainty so as a postdoc so career-wise there was this uncertainty around fixed-term contracts and now I had this new uncertainty added to it so what was life going to be like especially with kind of MS it's it could go in so many different ways and you just really don't know and the research isn't really there to help you predict your outcome and how will I going to manage especially in kind of academia high-pressure environments you know you said already stressful environments and then this kind of added uncertainty with fixed-term contracts you know will I get hired how will other people see me what impact will this have and as you can see but there's just so many questions and it basically just felt like I was maybe towards the end of like a thousand piece puzzle when someone flipped the table and I just had to kind of look at everything again and trying to sort kind of all of these different pieces out so the way I kind of coped and that might not be the best way of coping was that the researcher inside me took over and I started reading a lot pretty much everything I could find about multiple sclerosis all the research papers so the advantage of being a researcher was I had access to a lot of the actual research papers and wasn't just relying on kind of blog posts and also made a plan so I like planning I'm a bullet journal person I just like having things written down and I actually started my bullet journal in the time when I was going through the diagnosis phase because that's one of the things that helped me kind of clear my mind and I've been journaling since so coming up to four years and that all kind of worked until I hit this brick wall and really kind of felt like that and it was about three months after my diagnosis where I had a great day out in the field we did this amazing field trip and I just overdid it I absolutely exhausted myself and I had for the first time ever um fatigue like really but I couldn't get out of bed for three days and that for me was the first time I realized that life won't be the same because up until that point it kind of didn't feel that different but that was the first time I'm like okay crap like I can't I can't keep going on like that and that's when I actually reached out for help and as I said already I probably should have done that a bit sooner but I just didn't feel like I was deserving of it or I wasn't really ill enough to kind of get help which looking back um yeah was just silly but at the time that's just how it felt um so I did get help in different ways and one of the things um I did get was counseling and I had six sessions that were provided actually through my employer and one of the things I would say is find out now what is available for when you need it I had no idea we had this access I did not know the difference between access for staff and students for example so I actually ended up going to student services because I didn't know where to go for help and the first time help was offered to me was when I actually told the university about my diagnosis um they were really bad in kind of communicating what is available and now since that has happened to me I've been kind of pushing for that to change and there have been a lot better about kind of making links more available and just being a bit more open about the help that is available I also found some other helpful support groups and the the best one I can recommend for anyone going through you know chronic illness disability is chronically academic they're a peer-run group they have a really good facebook group they're so supportive and in the UK they are also now trying to associate with another disabled staff group which is just fantastic and they're just really open and welcoming I also started engaging with the MS community and the other disabled communities through social media or some some of the community groups also have like a forum where you can engage online and that's has been really helpful just as the answer is ready just talking to someone who then just and they say yes I know what you're talking about it makes all the difference which is why I kind of quite early on decided that I'm just going to be open about my diagnosis I'm also always happy to you know answer questions around it I really don't mind it's like on my you know my social media profile is kind of I don't want to say full with it but you know I am quite open about my life with MS I'm advocating for change as I said already the university was quite poor and kind of accommodating or providing support or actually advertising support that was available so I basically told them that that I don't think that was good enough and I for example on things that arranged was a talk from HR to the postdoc community about the help that they could get if they ever needed it and these are kind of some of the things I've been trying to kind of keep going ever since the other thing I did was actually I reflected on my priorities and that was things around am I really where I want to be is this the career I really want to do is this actually the job I want to do going forward and with some other things that had happened and some of the things I got involved with at university I decided that geoscience wasn't really the right path for me anymore and that's how I ended up in research and development and I've been in that post for 16 months now I think and I was one of the best decisions I've made I absolutely love my new role and it's been really really really great so the lessons I am still learning is that you can be active in the MS community you know you can help others MS is not my life it is a big part of it some days it's a bigger part than others to a point where I sometimes it's not that I forget that I have MS but it's just not in the forefront and other days you know if I wake up and I can't even get out of bed obviously then that day it is kind of my life but as was said as well you know tomorrow is another day and you might be able to make it onto the sofa I'm a runner and actually the my MS diagnosis got me back into running and kind of the motivation to try and stay active and my running club I joined has been really great and I like that there I'm kind of known first as a runner and then as a runner with MS and they actually have been really great at the kind of in the current situation we now have like a WhatsApp group and we started doing virtual club nights where someone basically shares some of their running experiences so I me and another runner from the group who also has MS are going to talk on Tuesday about what that's like and I think that's really really great that they're engaging and I made them reflection kind of part now of my practice so I try every six to 12 months kind of to look back and see if you know the things I've done in the past and just kind of using hindsight a little bit to help me plan a little bit better and one of the things for example was the actually finding out what are my kind of points when I should be getting help and kind of learning a little bit about what are kind of my triggers as well and with that comes that it's a never-ending learning curve the my MS is called relapsing remitting so I do I might have a relapse at some point I don't really know when and what that will be like so I'll just kind of have to learn kind of how to adjust so some of the things I had learned already because of my diagnosis have been kind of handy right now adjusting to this new life so this new uncertainty already dealt with that before so this just kind of felt like putting some of those things actually into practice and with that for me self-care has been quite important and this idea that so self-care is not selfish you need to be you know looking after yourself so you can do your job well you know and you can look after others and with that also to be kind and not just to others but also be kind to yourself and sometimes it's really good to actually think about how if this was if this were my friend how would I talk to them about it and then you do that to yourself and I think that is kind of the key especially right now is that like don't be too hard on yourself as the previous speakers have said already yeah thank you thank you so much um I was I was wondering like um it's it's difficult for people who don't know you to see that you might need to take better care of yourself um so do you tell people a lot about having been diagnosed with MS or do you only occasionally mention it because I can imagine that sometimes you make choices um that personally I would I would feel um other people might think I'm lazy or I'm leaving early because you know I want to take care of myself um do these thoughts pop in pop up in your mind and do you do does it make you tell people well maybe you don't want to tell them so um actually it's quite interesting especially with the lazy part so that was for me was one of the reasons actually why I opened up about having MS quite early and like told work because I was really worried that someone'd be like oh Steph's leaving at two o'clock again like you know look at that like slacker um the um the bringing it up is a bit so it's on for example all my social media profile on twitter it's in my it's in my bio for example um if I were to meet someone I probably wouldn't be starting with hey I'm Steph and I have MS but if at some point something were to come up so um for example if I needed to you know to leave or someone were to ask something or for example I have to take medication quite regularly um that would sometimes be no people might ask for it what's that for the other one I have is I use uh and I've been using that at the general assembly um for example is the please offer me a seat badge which I wear um I normally have it on my lanyard and um so this year actually if it would have happened in Vienna there would have been available for for everybody I bring my own but um they would have made them available and that's normally a conversation starter so people are like oh why do you have this badge and then I can explain you know why I have it and then depending on the mood I might not always say it's a mess sometimes I might just say it's because I have a health condition because I have a chronic illness there's a whole range of kind of replies um I can kind of use in a way and it would depend on the situation but one thing I found is once you actually open up about something like this people normally have something similar to kind of share back and they feel more likely to share that with you as well actually yeah I guess everyone has a story and and talking about it makes makes all these stories more makes easier for people to share their own story and makes it less of an exception and more of just a different a different story I guess exactly yeah just about normalizing it just the way people maybe talk about their children you know why not talk about something like that so um I absolutely agree and I just wanted to say thank you um for sharing my best friend has MS so I know some of the challenges and I just really enjoyed your talk but I uh I wanted to ask um because I have I have those days too where like the bad days where I need just a day off or I need to to take rest um and is there anything you do um to prepare for those or you know do you build in some extra time for the days when your symptoms are flaring or do you talk to your supervisors in advance or anything like that just to to prepare for those days yeah so I have to say my my current manager is amazing so if I were so obviously at the moment I'm working from home anyway but even if there were a day I would just email in saying look I'm not I'm not functioning today I do what I can and she's normally like yeah that's fine and the understanding is I'm and not make up those hours in a way but I you know but obviously you do you know and you would kind of make sure you do stay on top of like your deadlines and things like that so she's been really really great which one of that's one of the things I didn't really had um before um the other thing I have and I recommend people do that as a um off-day to-do list so basically I have like a little checklist so some of the things on that to-do list would be maybe make it to the sofa you know you know you know make a cup of tea like little things you know think about having a bath like just things that you could do that you can kind of feel like you've done something positive but that's not work or that's not and it's just um so I do like and that's um it's kind of the at the end of the day being able to say like yes I've achieved something however small you know this is where they don't compare not even yourself to others but don't compare good days and bad days you know just know that this was a bad day and you did the best you could and you know me and even if you only ticked one thing off of your list then you've at least have that one kind of tick. Gene Holloway and she will talk about how to overcome anxiety. Yeah so as uh Illinois said I'm Gene Holloway um and I'm really happy to be here today and share my experience um this is something I'm really passionate about um and as other people have said too this is just my personal experience with anxiety I'm not a psychologist um this is yeah my lived experience um trying to navigate my academic career while having anxiety um I went from barely functioning um to seeking treatment and making some changes in my lifestyle over the past couple of years and I've really found success through that so um I'm now you know feeling grounded I'm feeling happy um and I'm achieving at a higher level than ever um yeah so I'm going to today I'm just going to share a few of the tips that I've found um to get me from from that that sort of state to um where I'm at today um and if if you want some more information on anything that I'm discussing um I I think Eleanor mentioned at the beginning that I wrote a blog for the EGU Cryospheric Sciences um blog series um so there's lots more details in there um yeah so this is these are some feelings um that are associated with some mental health and you know this is stuff that I was feeling on a daily basis and all at once um and and you know I still do to some extent um but the feeling that jumps out for me is overwhelmed that's the one that stands out for you the most um so simply anxiety is the body's natural response to stress um and it's you know feelings of fear worry nervousness um yeah so like it's um it's a natural natural thing to some extent to have some anxiety um but it becomes problematic when it's debilitating um so for me when things get really bad you know I'm paralyzed I can't get out of bed um that kind of stuff so that's that's when that's when it starts to become a problem if it's affecting your life uh for me some of my symptoms uh include you know restlessness um you can't see my feet right now but I'm tapping my foot against the chair um I play with my hair a lot I need to move around um that kind of stuff um I call it the sense of impending doom um but it's this feeling of you know constant panic or fear um danger sort of always being in that flight fight or flight mode um two big ones for me are trouble concentrating and trouble sleeping um and and obsessive worrying obsessive thoughts racing thoughts um so when yeah when things are getting really bad um and I am waking up at night I you know I know I sort of need to make some changes or that my anxiety is getting really bad and I've gone through through phases um especially during let's say my comprehensive exams during my phd uh when I was having panic attacks because it was it was getting quite bad and you know that's associated with some physical symptoms like increased heart rate and and rapid breathing and stuff and um yeah so that doesn't happen very often and and hasn't for years now but um it can get can get bad like that and then yeah that was just my my symptoms but there are there are many others as well and if you're feeling any of these um maybe you have some anxiety um and then I wanted just to touch on some academia specific triggers um for me so the first one being um this sort of pressure to achieve at a high level and that can come from all directions um but a lot of the time it's pressure that I put on myself so one recent example of of this and how it triggered my anxiety is um I got an email from someone who read um a paper that I recently published and they just sort of mentioned in their email that I'd cited their paper incorrectly on my reference list and that triggered you know my perfectionism um I couldn't sleep I was obsessing about this forever for days and you know I wasn't eating I yeah anyways it was just a huge overreaction to this sort of like very minor mistake that I've made um and you know thankfully now I have the tools that I you know I caught myself in that moment and I was able to sort of get my feet back on the ground um but that that kind of stuff that those triggers are are happening all the time um and you know I think I think in academia um there is a lot of pressure to achieve at a high level and I think a lot of the stuff that Ann talked about in her talk about imposter syndrome is stuff that I feel as well um there are lots of deadlines and I think there um are often sort of unrealistic unrealistic expectations of what we can achieve in in those deadlines um competitive work environments um even toxic work environments I'm a graduate student and so things are uh can be competitive um and it's hard not to compare yourself to others um lack of support so um again I'm a graduate student um and often we're left to our own devices um but I think um for early career researchers as well if you get a tenure track faculty position um you're kind of you're kind of sort of like okay go go set up your research program um and I think I think it is one of the most stressful times um and yeah we're sort of on our own and I want to just to touch on um networking and conferences quickly I I can't possibly be the only introverted academic and I find conferences just terrible um there's a lot of good things to come out of them but I am just anxious the whole time um you know people are people always say oh conferences are fun just go network it'll be great um and I'm I am just terrified the whole time so you know those are all things that I think a lot of us experience that can be anxiety inducing um what I really wanted to talk about today was uh what I have done um in my life these lifestyle changes that I've made um that have been really helpful for me to be successful in tackling my anxiety um the first one is to get help and I can't emphasize this one enough um just finding someone that you can talk to uh for me that meant seeking professional help um so I regularly see a private counselor um and you know that isn't it doesn't always have to be the route you take but um it's been really really helpful for me and there's lots of options for that especially right now um there's online options and there's in my at my university there's um free counseling services so there there are many options um another big one for me has been to limit stress um where I can so I've cut down tremendously on what I'm involved in and I say no to a lot of things um and I even turned down opportunities that are probably beneficial to my career uh just because my stress management is more important um I won't have a career if I burn out so I try I really try to stay on top of that um I try and work regular sort of nine to five hours sometimes it's 10 to four um and that might mean that I work at a slower pace than what is typically you know viewed as an academic um and that's just because my mental health is more important um and I just need to do that because it's necessary for me and guess what um no one has noticed you know this I thought everyone was gonna be like oh jeans you know not working as hard as you used to and that's not the case um and in fact I'm actually achieving at a higher level now than I was before when I was you know burning myself out yeah there's other simple lifestyle changes that I've made um that have been really beneficial and I'd say that sleep is the biggest one for me um regular sleep is has been shown like studies show that it's key for good mental health um and so I try to go to sleep at the same time each night um and I wake uh I wake up at the same time and this includes on the weekends uh for the most part um a healthy diet and exercise so exercise has been mentioned quite a few times already um and I find those things are super beneficial and especially limiting alcohol and drug intake that's been a very important thing for me um and you know I try to do things like especially now with the coronavirus I try to do yoga and go for a walk outside to give my brain a break you know if I'm staring at the computer all day um I find my anxiety goes up uh yeah and you know I've been running and just trying to get outside it's very helpful um a couple other things I do or I do daily meditation and journaling um I find when things uh at work get busy and overwhelming these having these practices um help keep my stress and negative thoughts uh at day so there's lots of guided meditation apps that you can get um and even starting with two minutes is is great um it's challenging especially at first it's a practice right so you it's it's something that you you build your skills in and it is it is challenging especially you know I have racing thoughts and it's hard to get through a meditation without you know going off into lala land um but it's practice and it gets easier over time um and then the last couple things the work-life balance is something it's a term that's thrown around a lot but um I find it's extremely important uh for positive mental health outcomes for me um so yeah have fun get a hobby um I think being well rounded has um made me more resilient um when things get stressful if you feel like there's no time for fun or hobbies or rest there's a problem in in that equation um and then the last thing is if you're feeling overwhelmed and you need a break take a break um you know even if it's a short break but uh there's no no shame in taking some time off um I took a month off uh sort of in the middle of my phd because my mental health was tanking and I think that was probably one of the best decisions that I ever made um because if I hadn't taken that that break to recover I don't think that I I would be where I am at right now and the final thing that I wanted to leave everybody with is that there is hope um you know it sometimes feels like it feels like it's not going to be okay and you know there was a point in my life where I didn't I didn't think that I could be where I am at today um and if I overcame all this stuff you can too so uh and that's it thanks thank you jean for this really inspiring talk and inspiring message um is there anyone who has a question or comment for jean yeah I wanted to ask um this is the get help part it's like how how did you know kind of when to get help and why did you decide that you needed professional help because I've been kind of that's been one of the things for me it's been just really tricky to like when or now I'm getting better at it because I'm kind of learning but at the start it's like I said already it's like I just felt like I wasn't ill enough to get help so it's just wondering how you like how you decided when to get help and kind of what level of help yeah that's a great question um so I actually advocate for the fact that I think everyone should be doing some kind of counseling because I find it it's so helpful um I waited till it was too late so um I I started um seeing a counselor after my comprehensive exams I mentioned that I had sort of panic attacks and stuff um and things about quite quite bad sort of acute anxiety um I also suffer from some other mental health issues and trauma so um it kind of all like culminated in this big storm I mean I definitely waited till it was too late I think I think um I think there's a lot available for people and we often need an outsider's perspective to help us sort of untangle the the mess that's going on in our brain so I think if you're experiencing any kind of you know mild or moderate anxiety like worrying about even like a specific event it's worth checking in with somebody um so I wouldn't wait as long as I did if I could go back I was wondering like if there's people listening um to this and they recognize a lot of the symptoms that you explained um and they feel like they would like to get help um but they don't really know where to start I can imagine the step to go to a counselor is really big so what would you recommend them to do as a very first step like okay I I realize I need help where where should I go first um I mean there's there's a ton of resources online um so yeah reading even reading about people's experiences are really helpful because you can relate um and I found that was really good for me I have a lot of friends that I'm really open with and so it for me it was talking with friends that sort of made me realize that um you know I'm not alone in this and yeah like it's sort of validating those feelings um so yeah I think I think because I agree it's kind of a big uh scary thing to like go see a counselor um and it might be like a hurdle that's a bit too big for people to jump over but um I would say yeah like open up to someone that you're close with if that's a friend or you know your parents or siblings or something like that um or even like a work colleague anybody that can relate um and then and then you know there's available it's called talk space um but you can do some sort of virtual counseling if if like going to see somebody is too much um there's a lot of different options nowadays with all the sort of technology that's coming out so you can you know text with somebody if that's like a little bit less daunting that kind of that kind of stuff is available so there's there's so many resources out there um there's also like I mean I'm happy to talk with anybody uh the blog that I wrote my emails at the bottom um so like if if someone is having symptoms and they just want to want to talk about it I'm I'm totally open to that too so may I jump on that Delanova? Sure so I was thinking uh about what Stephanie asked what's the fast I don't think there is a minimum amount of tick you need to do be or a minimum amount of anxiety you need to have before you're allowed to get help um if you feel you need it then you probably do and you can probably benefit this genes us um and I think also maybe where to start depends potentially on the local systems um in the Netherlands pretty much any kind of care a care always starts with the GP and you probably know your GP so then that's a bit less daunting perhaps um then uh going online then just you know starting from from scratch thanks for that um we're going to move on to the final talk which will be by Juli Tijdenk and he's going to talk about the research perspective on this um yeah go ahead welcome everybody um I'm going to share my screen my name is Juli Tijdenk I'm a assistant professor and a re and a psychiatrist um here at the in Amsterdam at the Amsterdam UNC I do my research and I work as a psychiatrist in in Amsterdam and I am um I'm very much interested in mental health in academia specifically not only because of my role in as a as a psychiatrist but also because I study researchers this is my the main topic I my I did my PhD uh on research integrity and and that my PhD was called research published in Paris uh research on research and researchers um and I also wrote a small self-help guide called uh scientists on the sofa how to survive in academia so I'm very interested in in in well let's say the suffering in science and and how how do we suffer in academia and how can we improve it I mean there are so many different ways but the the the fact is is that we suffer and if we go zoom into the dates uh some some some cohort studies done among PhD students but also mad biomedical professors you have a 33% burnout rate among PhD students in in Amsterdam in the Flemish cohort of PhD student 30% is at high risk of developing a psychiatric disorder and that's 2.4 times more often than in the the in the comparative sample with highly educated people in in in Flanders there is interestingly those depressive symptoms are related to a more harshly relationship with their with with supervisors so probably there's a relationship with with the the the the quality of the supervisor and and the depressive symptoms and interestingly not only PhD students suffer I I think whole academia suffer because they we did a survey among biomedical professors and 25 almost 25 percent have severe symptoms of burnout and this is um this is quite uh these numbers are quite high so there is suffering the question is why do we suffer what we in in in our research always tell is there are three different global pillars of of suffering one is the individual fact the contributions to suffering one is the individual factors and then you can think of neuroticism or either you can think of personality uh uh uh that's that may be more vulnerable to these things but you have two other very important aspects in academia and that's one is the systemic pillar and then you can think of publication pressure or you can think of this very unidimensional uh um uh assessment criteria that we have and you have also have these uh cultural aspect they're also very important this is about unwritten rules about moral beliefs about a supervisor relationship within your department and they they they all contribute to a mental health in academia um and there are several other uh things that I want to highlight here there's an extreme hyper competitive uh uh atmosphere in academia if you look at the academic pyramids you have uh for example in the netlands uh 80 percent of people that are doing a PhD will not end up in academia only 20 20 percent will have a chance of getting a postal position which is fairly low we we we do educate a lot of PhD students but at the end of their PhD there's not a lot of space for for for getting a career in in science there are the as I told the assessment career that are only focused on public on numbers of publication and on citations and not so much on very important academic duties such as education such as mentorship such as um uh outreach public outreach and and there's so many more uh um important academic duties and one other thing that I really like to highlight is that we are it is never done it's never finished you can work endlessly you can work day at night and this academic work is never done so you have to protect yourself and that's so difficult because we want to do good we really want to perform as um as researchers and the same goes for me of course I want to be I'm now an assistant professor and maybe I want to more and I want to show the world that I'm a good researcher because I'm also of course I'm also insecure what I I am actually a good researcher or not um so it's logical that because of the burden because of so many tasks we have we work a lot if we look at uh in another research what we did we looked at uh misbehaviors and there you see one of the the most impactful misbehaviors and we replicated this finding in another uh in another cohort uh the most important and impactful research misbehavior is as as one of the things that I want to highlight here is insufficient insufficient supervision or mentoring of of early career researchers and this is this will come back continuously so it is so important that we as early career researchers we have a task but also as supervisors we have an important task to um to show the to do the good thing as a as a or supervisor or as a PhD student so the University of Maastricht has developed a great way how we can improve supervision and they develop to 10 golden rules for PhD candidates and 10 golden rules for supervisors and they are very helpful in in getting the work done in a in a joyous and in an optimistic way and one of the key things here is is and this is well we see that often also in interviews that we do with researchers is we do not talk about expectations the expectations of the PhD or the expectations or the supervisor we do not give a room as supervisor I'm also a supervisor we do not give enough room for the PhD students to become the captain of their own ship of the captain of their own project um we have to make sure that they manage the time well we have to encourage them to take off to don't work in the weekend don't show them to to work that you all that sometimes you work in the weekend if you want to work in the weekend um share your network as a supervisor or um um ask for what you need as a PhD student I mean they're so these 10 golden rules are really helpful for young young young early career research but also for supervisor because that's the next slide these 10 tips for supervisors are really helpful as well because having a good relationship with your supervisor really can make or break your PhD trajectory I mean it is it I always compare it being a parent you are in a way you are a parent for your PhD student not in in terms of and not in terms of really giving them you don't have to raise them as a as a person but you do have to raise them as a researcher and I really that's why I like the analogy so much because you have to be very very conscious about this specific role as a supervisor because you are the example and PhD students look up to you and see what you do and they copy your behavior which is like very normal behavior but we have to be very conscious about this so please have a look at this I think the slides are all will be available and have a look at these this wonderful study done in from master of university and then finally because I'm thinking I'm already running out of time some some tips from from my book how to survive in academia I just want to highlight too that I think are very important for for that will soften your your your your feelings about academia a bit but also can let you rediscover the beauty of academia because we're not in academia without any reason because it's a beautiful way to deal with the truth to be be part of of knowledge production to be to be to be a value for society there are so many good reasons it's a beautiful method I mean it's it's beautiful but on the other we should not we should de-romanticize academia a bit as well and then that's not about this knowledge that's but that's about the positions that are I mean being a professor I'm not a professor but I see a lot of suffering among professors as well I mean you're you work constantly you you there's hardly any time you you have to be available all the time you have so many different tasks which is on the one hand is daunting and ambitious but on the other hand it can be a big burden as well that's one thing that I want to highlight and the other thing what I always really like well of course I really like that we that we have to accept that we tend nonsensical to each other I mean there's so many things that we say during the day at conferences or in talks that that people just forget I this was one realization when I flew back from a conference in Hong Kong and I sat in the plane and I realized so I invest so much time and money in this conference what did I actually learn what really stayed with me and that was some networking maybe and maybe one talk that really was inspirational but the knowledge that I really took from the conference was quite it was not much and it this is not a bad thing but we have to realize that not everything what we talk is we should not take everything what we say too serious the last thing that I really like to highlight is embrace the role of coincidence and luck this is a two-sided coin here because we will get rejections all the time this is part of academic life we have to we are suffering a little bit because we get rejected all the time not only papers but also in grant proposals it's part of academic life but we have to be honest about it if you get if you get rejected it is not a personal rejection it's not that your research is bad or that the quality of your proposal is not good I think we should because the rates are 5 to 10 percent I mean it's just we have bad luck and the same goes we have to we have to send the same message to the people who are lucky that you get this the money we are just lucky it's not that your proposal is so much better in quality I believe don't believe that it's just we are lucky that we had this money and that we get these chances and it's a better message for yourself to be modest to stay modest but also to the people that didn't receive the grant that they were just not lucky instead of that they were not good enough so these are just some advices that come out of the book I'm currently working with my with the publisher with an with an a translation that and if you want to become a like a early early a reviewer of the of the book because we're currently translating it and we need some comments on it at the translation so send me a message and maybe we can work it out or if you're just interested in the book send me a message to this email address and and and and I'm always happy to answer your questions are there any questions for now thanks a lot I read the book and it's really it's short so you can read it very quickly but it has a lot of very practical pieces of advice on how how to survive literally in in academia um yeah like you really said is anyone has anyone a question or comment we don't have a lot of time left but I'm sure we have some time Chris Jackson here and hugely inspirational talk Yuri um really great um and you know I'd like the this idea that we try to survive in academia I think the idea that we are surviving is probably that word in itself tells you a lot and thrive would you know it's a cliche but let's use it if we're if we're here to survive that's not much right that's not much of an existence let's just be honest with ourselves and so the survivors I mean even the people who survive what does that tell you I mean so I would I would try you know I always try and scrap that word because I always think of like having your own experience in academia and then if you actually calibrate it back to your personal aims then it's um you can you can get fulfillment with a numerically lower amount of achievements than the person next door and this goes back to Anna's point about the metrics what do they measure I'm a harsh critic of metrics so I could talk forever about this but like what do those things actually measure about what we need academia to do to work and Yuri you touched on this you know we need people to to to supervise correctly to engage with people to do outreach do all of these other things that make academia work it's not simply publishing papers in nature right that doesn't make academia work so I don't know what your views are about that like how we could like if we are to measure things what would we be trying to measure in your experience of talking to academics Yuri yeah so so we we also did some research on on on responsible assessment criteria and and we talk with a lot of researchers about this and constantly what they say well we don't like these metrics no one likes those metrics because it's except for the the the the small portion of genetic researchers that publish constantly in nature um but no one likes them because it's not fair it's never fair because it's incomparable you cannot compare researchers one or the other so what they say is please do a 360 feedback round in your yearly assessment and take that into account in so make it a multi-dimensional approach give good ratings to supervision for example give what about your ratings of your your the teaching you do what about it for doctors then what about your clinical duties and this doesn't apply to you but what about the the public outreach I mean this is also a very important aspect of your of your life or what about having extracurricular activities such as writing blogs I mean why don't we should we should value blogs because they can be so much more impactful than than to be honest to be some papers or even my papers some papers are just and I I will be grateful if 10 people have read them I mean which is well in a block you can reach out to thousands faster it's shorter and maybe you can have more impact so so it's we have to go we should go to a multi-dimensional approach that's for sure and and we're changing that you can look at the Hong Kong-running festival for example we will give we'll give a better view to more honest assessment criteria and we should move away from the hers index and the impact factors thank you very much yeah we should really really try to find a new definition of success because it's really focused on the publication part and and like you said outreach teaching supervision that's also important then it's not really it's getting a bit more included in some institutions they try to look at it but still I feel like the basis is still very focused on these publication numbers and age index but let's hope we can contribute a bit to that by by having this webinar yeah that's it so if you have any questions or comments like I said you can type them in the comment section below and we will try to get back to you thank you