Recently, Guardian published an article titled There is a culture of acceptance around mental health issues in academia as part of its Academics Anonymous series.
In the past couple days, I've seen it shared several times among my academic networks on Facebook. I'm glad people are reading and sharing it; mental illness in academia is definitely a problem, and the post itself is well-written and gets to the heart of a lot of academic issues facing post-graduates. (I particularly appreciated the inclusion of the uncertainty of non-academic jobs and supervisors who resist addressing the mental health of their students.)
What's shocking, and what I just realized, however, is that this is the first time I can remember such an article making the rounds on Facebook. The subject material is nothing new; I've been reading similar articles on Chronicle of Higher Ed, Hook and Eye, and other sources for years. The academics I follow on Twitter and in #PhDchat are regularly sharing and having conversations about such issues, resulting in an always-present awareness of mental health issues in academia (along with the adjunct crisis, job market craziness, and gender/race politics in higher ed, among others).
However, I have never seen any of these articles shared on Facebook. The conversation for some surrounding mental health in academia is, if not just beginning, entering a more open, common, and normalized round of dialogue.
What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that the sudden omnipresence of this article following an absence of other discussions has really emphasized the exact problem the article, and others like it, describes: mental health is an accepted part of academia that no one wants to address, whether for reasons of reputation, expectations, or fear.
I think I might need to start sharing some Hook and Eye articles on Facebook...
