The Importance of Prioritizing Mental Health in Academic Supervision

There is a mental health crisis in academia. In 2018, Teresa Evans et al. reported a significantly higher incidence of anxiety and depression amongst graduate students when compared with the general population. This report highlighted a call to action to change policy and culture to improve the mental health amongst graduate students. However, it seems, according to this 2023 report from Ting Chi, Luying Cheng, and Zhijie Zhang, that things have deteriorated in the 5 years following the declaration of a mental health crisis.

While there are a multitude of factors contributing to poor mental health in academia, this post will focus specifically on the mentor-mentee relationship, and basic measures that principal investigators (PIs), postdoctoral researchers, research team leaders, and even PhD students supervising bachelor and master students can implement.

Why the Mental Health of Graduate Students Matters

For most of us, the health (both mental and physical) of our fellow humans is important without explicit justification. Empathy and care generally motivate concern for our colleagues, employees, mentees, peers, and the general population. However, we are often told or shown to minimize the human aspect of management and make decisions purely based on data and metrics in professional and academic settings.

I want to merge these perspectives by demonstrating how empathetic supervision can improve performance metrics and insensitive supervision can actively impair performance. A review from 2018 by Sonia J. Bishop and Christopher Gagne focuses on the impacts of anxiety and depression on decision making.

The full review and subsequent follow-up work dive into the context, power, theory, and caveats of this field of research, so it is highly recommended to read the review for a more profound understanding. For this blog, I highlight the broad-strokes conclusions:

• Anxious and depressed individuals struggle to adapt their learning rate as their environment changes.

• Individuals with anxiety and depression overestimate the probability of experiencing negative outcomes and events in the future.

• The abilities to recall experiences and simulate possibilities are impaired by anxiety and depression.

• Anxiety is linked to risk aversion, and depression is linked to overestimation of effort. Both of these result in decreased engagement in rewarding activities.

  
  

All of these conclusions taken together support the fact that action and decision-making processes are impaired by anxiety and depression. Specifically, the model presented in the paper highlights that both model-free and model-based decision-making processes are involved in altered action selection amongst individuals with anxiety and depression.

This 2024 report published in Nature Biotechnology supports these conclusions, highlighting that anxiety is associated with avoiding tasks and avoiding risk-taking, and that depression is associated with lack of motivation and lack of focus. Graduate students with anxiety and depression are therefore performing at less than their potential, and their productivity and quality of work would greatly benefit from addressing mental health concerns.

Understanding the Importance of the Supervision Role

The 2018 article from Teresa Evans et al. specifically explored the mentor-mentee relationship. They found that the majority of students (over 50%) experiencing either anxiety or depression reported a lack of mentorship and support; a negative emotional impact; being undervalued by their mentors; and that their mentor was not a positive asset to their careers. Further, lack of supervision quality and quantity was one of the top five causes of stress among graduate students, along with job insecurity and workload/time pressure in a survey reported by Julian Friedrich et al. in 2023.

The 2024 report published in Nature Biotechnology explores the aspects of academic research that either exacerbate or alleviate the experience of anxiety and depression in graduate students. The table below outlines some of the aspects of research studied, if it alleviates or exacerbates anxiety and depression, along with things supervisors can do to improve their students' working conditions and mental health to help them alleviate depressive and anxious experiences.

Aspect	Impact on Anxiety	Impact on Depression	How to do Better
Unreasonable Expectations	Very Exacerbating	Somewhat Exacerbating	Discuss and determine project expectations with the student. Refer to previous experience and base expectations on reasonable achievements. Set reach goals and minimum goals. Implement a rubric to communicate and document goals.
Research Requirements	Very Exacerbating	Somewhat Exacerbating	Prioritize goals. Implement a rubric to communicate and document goals.
Lack of Technical Support	Very Exacerbating	Somewhat Exacerbating	Use your network to get the necessary support for your students. Put them into communication with those necessary to provide technical support if you are unable to.
Negative Reinforcement	Very Exacerbating	Very Exacerbating	Though less commonly reported, this can deteriorate the mental state of a researcher very quickly. Best to avoid it all together and find better means of maintaining standards.
Lack of Structure	Very Exacerbating	Somewhat Exacerbating	This was reported as very common, and exacerbating to both anxiety & depression. Clear communication and tracking of goals and requirements can introduce the structure required to succeed. Keep the structure consistent across students. Implement a rubric.
Comparison with Others	Very Exacerbating	Somewhat Exacerbating	This was the most commonly reported exacerbating aspect. Shift the focus: instead of comparing students with one another, compare each student's performance to a rubric of predetermined expectations.
Completing Tasks	Very Alleviating	Somewhat Alleviating	This was the most commonly reported alleviating aspect. With this in mind, breaking down large goals into individual tasks can lower the barrier to feelings of achievement.
Emotional Support	Very Alleviating	Somewhat Alleviating	This does not have to be done entirely by the mentor, but willingness to support time out of the lab for mental health support goes a long way. Collaborating with students to set goals that are appropriate for their needs reflects humanity.
Flexibility	Somewhat Alleviating	Somewhat Alleviating	This was the second most commonly reported alleviating aspect. Assessing students based on goals accomplished instead of time spent in the office is a productivity-centered approach that shows trust in your students and maintains flexibility.
Collaboration	Somewhat Alleviating	Somewhat Alleviating	While collaboration is an alleviating aspect, it happens less frequently. You can increase the instance of collaboration by planning projects with students and empowering them to make more decisions in their research.
Progress	Very Alleviating	Very Alleviating	While progress was one of the most alleviating aspects of research, it was also reported to happen very infrequently. You can increase the frequency of progress markers by making plans to achieve goals efficiently, and establishing and maintaining project timelines.

Key Take-Aways for Researchers, Supervisors, and Research Managers

Mental health matters. Researchers' states of mind have a direct impact on their ability to engage in intellectual, independent research. Decision making processes and the ability to recall information and experiences accurately is directly impacted by experiences of anxiety and depression.

Luckily, directive consistency and clarity can alleviate feelings of anxiety and depression. Supervisors have direct control over their clarity in outlining and communicating expectations. Rubrics are fantastic tools that supervisors can use on a project-to-project basis to outline their expectations clearly. Likewise, supervisors have direct control over their consistency in assessing their students' work and determining appropriate responses for satisfied and unmet expectations by outlining responses clearly in the rubric.

All students should be held to the same standards, and these standards should be clearly communicated at the outset of a project and maintained consistently throughout the project. Rolling out rubrics is a wonderful way to invite students to provide input before the actual work on the project begins to avoid future issues and streamline productivity.