Adam Levy: 00:02
Adam, hello. I ’m Adam Levy, and this is Mind Matters academia ’s mental health crisis, a podcast from Nature Careers. In this episode: the mental health of faculty.
Progressing through academia can be profoundly challenging, and there is a great deal of discussion about the mental health toll this can take on undergraduates, PhD students and postdocs alike.
But often this discussion overlooks faculty. How do the pressures of academia particularly affect established researchers and what can their role be in promoting healthier practices?
You may remember that in last week’s episode, we spoke with Michelle Kimple, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the United States.
As part of our discussion around her career following her bipolar and ADHD diagnoses, I asked her: “As a lab leader, what does it mean to you to have these experiences, I guess, both with neurodivergence and with mental health? Is that something that feeds into your work as a lab leader and what you see as your duties as lab leader?”
Michelle Kimple: 01:16
Absolutely, it s changed the entire way that I mentor people. When I was starting out in this career, I thought you had to kill yourself in the lab.
And so now I have a Welcome to the Kimple Lab packet that basically goes through all of my expectations and what my trainees can expect from me.
And in there I definitely state that I’m a strong proponent of work-life balance. Because I’m out with my diagnoses.
I’ve had several trainees come to me to just say that they were sort of inspired and hopeful from reading my story, because they felt like they were going through similar challenges, and seeing somebody, seeing a senior professor who’s willing to go out on a limb and sort of go public with the challenges that they’ve experienced, has helped them to seek reasonable accommodations and support for their own struggles that they’re going through.
It is actually sort of a silver lining, in a sense, because I feel like it s made me a better leader and a better mentor.
If I had had a proper diagnosis and support when I was a graduate student, I wouldn t have gone through all of the struggles that I went through.
So yeah, it s been really rewarding to be able to hear from trainees about how my work and my outreach has inspired them.
Adam Levy: 02:53
And we ll learn more about how faculty can foster healthy, supportive environments later in this episode, when we speak to an academic about how his experiences with depression as a PhD student influenced his approach as a professor. But first I d like to introduce you to Hilal Lashuel.
Hilal is a professor of neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, where he studies neurogenerative diseases.
But among his publications are pieces he’s written on research itself, in particular, the mental health of faculty.
So we started off our conversation by discussing what kicked off his reflections on this topic.
Hilal Lashuel 03:35
So the primary trigger for me to start to think about mental health was after I had a heart attack in 2016. Going up a hill, you know, toward my house, I start to feel this huge chest pain that caused me to fall on the ground.
I will never forget that moment, because at that moment, you know, one, when you face death, the first thing that comes into your mind is your family, you know?
And I kept seeing basically my family and my wife, and I was really scared, you know, that this may be my last moment and I would not see them.
Fortunately, that was not the case. So for the next three to four months, I went through a very tough personal process alone, because I was trying to process this alone, thinking mostly: what if this has happened?
And that got me to think about the family, you know, their future, their life would be.
But also all the moments that I missed. All the important events in my children, all the time that you know, my work has taken me away from my family. The guilt, whether I had prepared everything for them. Eventually that led me to the next phase, which is, you know, starting to think about my work and why did I have to do what I had to do to miss all of those important moments.
You know, travelling a lot, spending a lot of time in the office, coming back home, and then keep working on the papers. And that’s again, took me to the second question, which is: “As academic, do we have to lead that lifestyle to succeed?”
Adam Levy: 05:23
Well, can you explain, then, how you began to answer those questions for yourself, personally and understand how academia was taking a toll on your personal life?
Hilal Lashuel: 05:35
So when I started to think about that, I took sort of a journey back to the time I started in academia. So as a PhD student, you know, I came from Yemen at the age of 15.
I went to New York, and then I started my PhD, you know. So failure was not an option. So, you know, I had to work. I had to succeed. And I would say, you know, you became numb to my own feelings.
And then you enter a life of a faculty, and you begin to think about it. You go from a day where your primary goals and objectives are to do excellent science and publish excellent papers, to within sometimes a period of a few days, to a position where you have to be an excellent teacher, to be an excellent manager, to be a great accountant, to learn how to mentor and guide people and provide them with mental health support.
All of a sudden you’re expected to do all of these And you re expected to do all without any complaint or asking for support.
And you know, that creates a huge amount of pressure, but you know, we re so focused on where we want to get that we really lose connection with our own feeling and mental health, and unfortunately, even lose connection with how what we re doing impacts our health and impact the people around us.
Adam Levy: 07:02
So then, after this experience where I suppose you were really facing your own mortality, how did you decide to rearrange your career and your personal life?
Hilal Lashuel: 07:13
Usually, mental health in academia becomes really a crisis for us, and people began to pay attention to it when more than one thing comes in.
And for me, it was a combination, to be honest, of this personal event and a work stressful situation.
And then I started to say, you know: “Am I alone?”
Because, you know, it wasn’t normal to talk about this with any with any person, because you know, there is a stigma in academia that if you’re a professor, you’re supposed to be good at everything.
So what we learn to do for a long period in our life is what I call, “you fake it until you make it.”
So I started to look at the literature and started to see what’s out there about faculty mental health, and I was quite astonished that there was very little.
So the focus was all about this, you know, the students.
So the first thing that I wanted to do is to write about this. So in the first year, I wrote three articles about the topic dealing with different aspects of mental health.
Adam Levy: 08:18
And when you published these articles, what kind of response did you receive from the readers?
Hilal Lashuel: 08:23
So the articles were more of a therapeutic experience for me. And then when I wrote them, at the end, before I published, I was very concerned. I was very concerned of opening up and talking about my personal life, my feeling.
I was concerned whether, you know, that’s going to be perceived as weakness. So to the point that I even timed the publication of these articles with the time when we’re publishing a lot of papers from our lab.
And I was, you know, thinking about that. I needed this as an additional credibility stamp, you know, to what I would say.
I must say that I was very surprised by the response. You know, what I perceived as a weakness, other people perceived as strength.
When I when the first paper came out, it was in elife, and it was a paper called Mental Health in Academia: What about faculty?
And there I shared my experience and my heart attacks, and I received large number of letters from students, young faculty, senior faculty, and most of them, you know, thanking me for having the courage to speak up.
But what was interesting is almost with every mass email I received, people were openly sharing their experience, telling me that they’re going through the same thing.
And I will never forget receiving a message from a lady who told me, you know: “I wish that my husband had the same courage to speak up, because he would have been alive with us today.”
You know, so that those were reassuring, but also inspired me to keep the dialogue going and, you know, publish the second and the third piece, and try to advocate more for this within my own team and within the university.
Adam Levy: 10:22
And from this dialogue, are you seeing that people that faculty are just trying to cope on their own, or are there support systems in place that can actually support not just students, but also faculty going through mental health challenges?
Hilal Lashuel: 10:38
You know, it‘s been almost four years, and I wish I could tell you that universities are taking faculty mental health more seriously. And the reality is we’re not doing enough
Because I have a very simple way of measuring whether a university is serious about mental health, and the first measure is whether the leadership of the university speaks publicly about the issues.
Until the president, the senior management of the university are committed to this cause and speaking up publicly about it, I think people will always be reluctant to speak.
What we’re seeing now, over the last year, is a new trend where, you know, people who are going through burnout, you know, reaching that, are actually speaking about it and coming up and saying, “I need a break,” you know.
And I think this is the beginning of the change, but it’s coming from the faculty. It is not coming from the system. The system remains, what I call passive responsive.
And when you deal with the student stress and student anxiety and mental health, you know the students will be in the university for four years.
So in the case of the faculty, it is different, because those are people who are in the system for years or forever when you talk about senior faculty.
So the changes that are required are not just about counselling.
They’re about looking at the drivers of stress, and those require revisiting our value system, revisiting the incentive structure within academia, and nobody seems to be willing to do this.
Adam Levy: 12:16
What’s your dream, then? What is your kind of dream institution that does take the mental health, not just of the students, but also of the faculty, seriously.
Hilal Lashuel: 12:26
I think it’s an institution that values the mental health of everyone that’s in the system, because our life is interconnected. As a professor, as a research professor, you know, I can’t accomplish anything without the dedication and the work of my students and the staff that support us.
When we hire people in universities, we expect them to dedicate their lives to the mission of the university, but we never send the same message back that we’re also committed to your success and to your wellbeing.
So integrating that as part of the value of the university is important.
I think the dream is to be in a place where we provide people with support. If we assign people new responsibilities, it’s very important to provide them with the right support and training to deliver these responsibilities.
You know, not everyone is super good at teaching from the start. Not everyone has, the, you know, been trained to manage.
So what happens is when people struggle with relations, you know, managing their students and their postdocs, you know, what they do is they keep it to their self.
So I think a system that values people, a system that supports people, and a community where people are comfortable to talk about the challenges and are willing to support each other.
When I had my heart attack, you know, I have the best colleagues in my university at the individual level.
But because everyone is so busy that, when somebody gets sick, you know, and we’re all guilty of this, nobody takes the time to say, “I wish you well, but what can we do to help you manage the time during your teaching, your research load during this process?”
So, you know, a place where we value the mental health of the individual as important to the wellbeing of, you know, the department or the institution.
And I think, a place where, you know, people have have clarity and expectations. You know, one of the most challenging things in academia for faculty is there is no clarity of expectation of what you would need to succeed.
You know, new faculty should be supported to receive as much feedback as possible. I would like to see a system where the leadership and the senior faculty take much more of an active role in promoting work life balance, healthy academic environment where the wellbeing of everyone is valued and supported.
Adam Levy: 15:08
What are the ways now in your own life and in your own lab that you try to practice that and try to shift the priorities?
Hilal Lashuel: 15:17
I must tell you that, you know changing your life after 20 years in academia, it’s not something that could happen overnight. You know, I realized the first thing I need to do is I need to cut my lab by half. So I had set that goal.
But thinking about doing that was on its own, stressful, because I kept thinking about, how will this impact my career, how will this impact my productivity?
And the more I thought about this, the more I came to realize how my life is driven by me managing the expectation of others, and not my own expectation, and what I want.
You know, so the most liberating moment in my life, I think, when I realized that at this point of my career, with everything that I have accomplished, I have nothing to prove to anyone else. And I’m just going to focus on doing science the way I like it, prioritizing my family and my health.
So this was the first decision, and I think this was the most liberating moment of my life, and the result is I cut the size of my group by almost 50%, and that gave me much more time to spend with my group and with my own enjoying science, thinking, reflecting.
You know, for the first time, I was able to write my own papers and my own reviews, just me, you know, reflecting on this. And devote as much time as I can with the family.
I think the second thing is, I became more comfortable to speak up about my own feelings, to share my own vulnerability, and more attuned and more sensitive to the people around me.
You know, the way we talk to people, and the way we respond to people, actually have a huge impact on people’s mental health.
You know, if somebody comes into my office to ask a scientific question, it’s okay to tell them I’m busy.
But if they’re coming to talk a personal issue or thing, then I always make the time, change the working environment as much as I can to create an environment where there is a sense of family and people supporting each other. And I think we made quite a lot of progress on that in our lab over the last five years.
Adam Levy: 17:35
Do you have any advice for other faculty members on how they can approach their careers in a way that prioritizes their mental health and wellbeing.
Hilal Lashuel: 17:44
When you start as a faculty, the most thing we’re worried about constantly is, am I going to succeed or not?
If I had to do this again, I would just focus on doing what I like and what I’m passionate about, and doing it to the best of my ability, but not to be worried so much about the outcome to the point that it would, you know, sort of negatively impact my life or the life of people around me.
Very often people ask me, you know, “How do you know when it’s time to do something about it?”
And I always tell people, it’s when you go home and you take your problems with you, to the point that they affect your own physiology, your ability to sleep, and they begin to affect how you interact with people, when you reach these points, it’s important to pause, reflect and think what’s important in life.
And if there is one thing I would advise to do early is not to be afraid to seek support. And not to worry about the stigma, not to worry about what we people will say, because at the end, it’s no one will worry about you more than you, and no one will care about you more than the people you love and the people and your family.
And we shouldn’t worry. If one goes to academia, does their best go six years, doesn’t get tenure. You know, it should not be a problem.
And as a culture in academia, we should not make it, stigmatize this.
The other advice I would ask and is that we need to pay attention to the people around us, to help people when we can.
If you’re going to be a faculty, it will be important to get some sort of training in how to manage your own mental health and the mental health of people around you.
A little bit more of awareness and education can go a long way in improving our life, the life of people around us, but also equally important, our own happiness and productivity.
Adam Levy: 19:48
That was Hilal Lashuel, And we’ll be returning to the topic of what we can change, both as individual academics and in academia itself, in episodes towards the end of this series.
Next up in this episode, though, I spoke to climate scientist Dave Reay at the University of Edinburgh in the UK.
Dave is currently working to understand how we can find our way to net zero emissions fairly.
Dave Reay: 20:15
All the best science in the world, all the best kind of technology is useless in terms of tackling climate change. If it doesn’t work for people, it just won’t stick.
Dave Reay: 20:24
Back in 2018 Dave penned a piece for Nature discussing his struggles with depression.
And at the time, I spoke with him for the Nature podcast, the sibling podcast of the Nature Careers podcast.
Dave is a professor, and I was keen to learn how his experiences have continued to evolve with his career. But first I asked “Now, looking back earlier in your career, can you describe when you first became aware of issues around your mental health?”
Dave Reay: 20:56
I started working on climate change in the early 90s. And that’s when my mental health was really notably suffering.
Not particularly at that stage about around climate anxiety, it was actually the process of starting working on a PhD.
Yeah, that PhD experience, certainly the first half of it, my mental health really suffered. Looking back at it, a whole host of factors, being away from family and friends like you often are when you take a PhD, and you know, you have to move city and you’re making new relationships.
But I was coming out, I went straight into PhD from undergraduate, from finishing my honours degree, and I was completely unprepared for, kind of what to expect.
And I put huge expectations on myself, actually, in terms of how hard I should be working and how well things should be going.
And I had no idea at the time that, actually, in research, things go wrong a lot, and that is normal.
And so the pressure that I loaded on myself, combined with not having my kind of social structures in place, in terms of friends and family close, they really hit me hard in terms of mental health.
Adam Levy: 22:17
And can you describe at all what that was actually like when you say it hit you hard in terms of your mental health?
Dave Reay: 22:22
It’s hard even all these years later, kind of remembering it.
Because what I did was I was acutely aware in my own mind that I was failing, and I was embarrassed about that, acutely embarrassed.
And so I started closing off the real me. I became this kind of shell who was trying to put across this, this view to everyone else that I was doing fine.
Outwardly, I was kind of, I was doing my work, I was going in, if you could see me outside of the lab. I wasn’t eating properly, I wasn’t sleeping.
And I got into this situation of thinking, “Well, there’s no way out here. I’m kind of, I’m failing, but I can’t admit it.”
I saw the the only way out as as ending it all, which was, yeah, really bleak.
Adam Levy: 23:10
Was there anyone around you who was able to see what what you were going through and to to intervene in any way?
Dave Reay: 23:17
I don’t know if they knew how bad it was. But there were a few people around me who were just, they were just lovely people. And so they’re the ones who saved me at that point.
There were people actually who I was working with, particularly one of the technicians, a guy called Paul, who was just, he probably did see me deteriorating, because, you know, you do your best when you’re in that, that situation, to put up this brave face and, you know, and you get really good at it.
It’s one of the scary things, I think, is that people who are going through some of, you know, really deep depression like that, can be really good at hiding it.
But he probably got inklings because we spent a lot of time together. You know, he was a good friend. But he really helped just by being that good friend.
And just, I remember him, you know, one day, he must have seen a crack in my veil, as it were, in terms of how I was getting on, and he just came up and said, you know, “How you doing?”
And I, kind of, I broke down, you know, just in terms of the fact I wasn’t doing very well. And he, he just was consistently a lovely guy and a good friend, and he and others just helped so much in terms of me remembering that I wasn’t alone.
There were ways out. And the ways out to that became apparent, was around talking to other people, spending time with other people.
So one of my great regrets in life is I never got the chance to tell Paul how important he was. He died a few years later, quite suddenly. And that was a dark time for all of us. But yeah, he’ll always be in my memory as just a beautiful person. And you know, I think he probably saved my life, to be honest.
Adan Levy: 24:58
Did you understand at the time what you were going through? Did you have a name for what you were going through?
Dave Reay: 25:04
Part of that kind of almost, that split personality, or that withdrawal into your mind and putting up that that false version of yourself is you put so much effort into that false version of yourself, you begin to believe that bit.
You almost stop yourself reflecting on what you’re doing and the reality of it. So it took time.
I mean, for me, the time I really realized how bad it had been was when I was starting to recover.
Halfway through my PhD, I went down to work in the Southern Ocean, and I was on the ship, and there I had the combination of lots of physical work, lots of food, regular meals that you were kind of expected to be at.
And I think that was really good, just for my kind of brain chemistry as well, probably helped.
But also just being surrounded by just fantastic people, again.
I remember sitting out one night on the deck looking at this beautiful environment that the Southern Ocean is, and thinking, “Wow, I’m glad. I’m so glad to be alive.”
And I hadn’t thought that for a long time, and at that point, then I reflected and thought, you know, wow, I’m kind of, I’m starting to get better. And wow, I had been to a really dark place.
Adam Levy: 26:18
Is that something that you think of as purely in the past, or is mental health something that you think of for yourself and have thought of for yourself throughout your career?
Dave Reay: 26:27
Yeah, it’s always there as a having having been to that dark place you kind of for me, I know some of the signs and I know some of the behaviours of myself to watch out for.
So taking away from family is a crucial one for me. Family is so important, and so being away from my wife is something that, you know, I try and avoid.
As an academic, like any job, you do have to spend time away, and the job can be really busy, But getting that better balance.
Adam Levy: 26:58
You’ve spoken quite a bit about, I suppose the more informal structures that supported you in your own in your own mental health. Have you also sought out support from more formal structures, for example, university wellbeing officers or, you know, therapy of any kind?
Dave Reay: 27:17
No, I haven’t. And I so wish I had. I mean, I think looking back at how much my own mental health deteriorated when I was a PhD student, I think I could have helped myself a lot more just by reaching out to some professional support.
It was part of that self-denial about what was going on. I felt shame, not just about how I felt about the PhD and how my work was going, but shame about my mental health, actually.
And you know, and I felt there was a real stigma around mental health that was part of reflecting on it now, part of why I didn’t go to seek professional help. That was admitting that I was that I was ill, but also I was afraid that people would find out, and that kind of stigma.
And I think that’s looking back at it, that’s where we’ve come a long way. I think there’s some way to go, but if I look at my own students at Edinburgh, and my kind of research colleagues, we’ve got a much better, formalized system for that in terms of where to go, but also the kind of the checks and balances.
You know. if you haven’t seen people, or they haven’t been interacting for even a fairly limited time, that will be followed up on and, you know, and as a supervisor, the best thing for me, reflecting on it, in terms of me being a good supervisor, is having been through that kind of really dark time as a PhD student and knowing kind of some of the factors which led to that, that isolation, that withdrawal and not being able to talk with people.
And actually now as a supervisor, you know, looking out for that really carefully. But actually, every meeting, it not just being about, “Okay, you know, what’s your latest data?”
Yes, that’s part of it. But actually, that pastoral side of just going, “How are things?” You know, it ’s one of those things which is just nice, because we’re humans as well as researchers. So that’s good.
But that gives you an ability to see changes as well, and to and to allow that space for people to open up.
And you know, certainly in my experience over the years, people have, and I am always so grateful to students and colleagues who do that, you know, and, feel safe enough.
Adam Levy: 29:40
And for yourself, do you try and be quite open and quite vulnerable as you continued your career, from your PhD onwards, but especially now, in your role as, as a supervisor and with people reporting to you?
Dave Reay: 29:53
It’s odd, I suppose, in terms of the strength I get from being open. I feel more confident in talking about my own battles with mental health to people who are going through it themselves, saying, “Look, you know, yeah, I’m a, I’m professor at Edinburgh, but I suffer from mental health issues and suffered really badly.”
And sharing that on occasion has been, I think, really useful for them to feel okay? “Yeah, I can. I can open up with Dave here, because he kind of knows some of what’s going going on with me.”
Yeah, it’s just another guy who’s, who’s fought these demons as well. So and that helps me actually be able to do it.
And I think it’s one of those things which that mutual trust when you’re talking to people like that, that shared experience, I think, is useful, even if it’s just to say, “Don’t make the mistake I did. Go and talk to professionals, see how you can kind of get that kind of support, as well as the kind of pastoral support that you get from people like me.”
Adam Levy: 30:58
You and I actually first spoke a few years ago just in relation to a comment piece that you published in Nature, specifically discussing your journey with mental health.
That’s obviously a very large scale way of disclosing your journey. That’s not kind of the one-on-one conversations we’ve been speaking about. Yeah, how was that for you to publish that piece in Nature, and what was the response like?
Dave Reay: 31:24
I’m so glad I did that. I suppose that was a sign of being quite a lot better actually was, was being able to put it down in writing.
Also the fact that that stigma that I talked about, about being essentially open about mental health issues in academia is less. But it’s still there in some quarters, I think so.
So part of that writing that article was to shine a light on how far we had come. And we have come a long way, in my view, but there’s still work to do.
And also the fact that when I was in my early 20s, you know, starting my PhD, and I used to sit and read Nature back then, it would have been quite useful for me to have seen that article and gone well, “This, you know, this professor, this kind of, this career that I would like to have at that stage, you know, he went through quite deep depression, and these are the things that in his reflections would have helped him.” And maybe that would have helped me if I’d had that article.
So it was, I’m really glad I did it. The response, Adam, was just, it was so lovely.
A lot of people wrote just to say they were glad that I had kind of written it, because it did chime with some of the things they were going through or had gone through. So yeah, really glad I did that.
Adam Levy: 32:49
Do you have any advice for, I suppose, not just for people who maybe are struggling with their mental health, but the people around them?
Do you have any advice for for other people in the lab, for things to watch out for, or other lab heads, or even for institutions?
Dave Reay: 33:07
You know, it’s one of those things. I suppose, being from the academic perspective, you’ve got lots of things you’ve got to do in terms of structures, but they’re there for a reason.
And I think, you know, doing those courses is, really important, because it does help you, then in real life, as it were, as a supervisor, but also as a colleague, to kind of have, be better tooled up, and to know what processes are in place or where to sign post students or colleagues to. So do that.
I think I talked a lot about the fact that what was important to me was I wasn’t alone. And that was people like Paul.
So I don’t think Paul ever had any kind of training in mental health support of his colleagues. I think he was just kind. And that kind of sums up how we can help each other so much our students and our colleagues in academia is just being kind.
And I think if you go to no training courses and you ignore all that, and you say, “I’m just doing my research and my teaching.”
If you’re a kind colleague and supervisor and student, then you’re going to help the mental health of everyone around you,
Adam Levy: 34:21
Just looking to the future, do you have particular hopes for how we can can cope with all this better in research, can do better when it comes to mental health of researchers?
Dave Reay 34:32
What our universities are providing is certainly better than it used to be. In my experience. I think also, I think for us as researchers, we kind of need to stay on our game.
So we’ve seen changes in expectations of academics from when I started, it was, you know, very much about your research profile, and that was stressful in itself.
But actually the expectations now tend to be wider for academics. So around, you know, yes, you’ve got to be a teacher, but you’ve got to have lots of impact as well. You’ve got to be good at management and a little bit more. I guess business-savvy as our universities generally have to be.
So those pressures are changing, and so there’s a risk there that the support systems around our mental health don’t keep up.
So they need to be dynamic, and they need to be up-to-date. You know, the change in context that students are coming from, the cost-of-living crisis a perfect example for all of us, I guess, of an extra pressure, which, as universities and academic institutions, you know, we’re part of those communities.
And our staff and students, all of us, you know, are experiencing those kind of wider pressures, which the university needs to be able to respond to if it’s going to protect our mental health.
It’s kind of a never-ending process, but the direction is positive, I think, overall. And yeah, I think the who knows what’s around the corner, but our resilience in terms of the structures that are in place to support us when we have mental health challenges in universities. Wow. It’s so much better than 30 years ago, and in 30 years’ time, hopefully it will be, the relative increase will be just as big.
Adam Levy: 36:20
Dave Reay there, as I mentioned, Dave is a climate scientist. And later in this series, we’ll be reflecting on the mental health toll that this kind of research can take.
Unknown source quote: 36:31
I started to get more worried about climate change and what we were doing or not doing to avoid the impacts.
Adam Levy: 36:38
But in the next episode of this series, we’ll be returning to a topic that several of our conversations have already touched on: burnout.
Until then, this has been Mind Matters: Academia’s Mental Health Crisis, a podcast from Nature Careers. Thanks for listening. I’m Adam Levy.
More/Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00232-x