Crosspost: Encourage whistle-blowing: how universities can help to resolve research’s mental-health crisis

By the editors of Nature

Researchers working in academia are more likely to experience anxiety and depression than are members of the population at large, as we report in a Feature investigating the mental-health crisis in science. The COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll on researchers, as it has on many in wider society, but it is clear that a major factor common in academia is a toxic work environment. 

Credit: Alamy 

A proliferation of short-term contracts, low salaries (particularly for early-career researchers), competitive working environments and pressure to publish are all contributors — but so are bullying, discrimination and harassment. Study after study has reported on the devastating effects that these behaviours can have, especially on under-represented groups such as women, people of colour, low-income students and members of sexual and gender minorities.

Regrettably, the finding that bullying and harassment are widespread in academia is not new, as reporting by Nature and other journals show. But few academic leaders seem to be doing much to solve the problem. 

Read more at

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01703-9