Postgraduate Mental Health & Wellbeing
We’re here to support your mental health and wellbeing throughout your postgraduate journey, offering resources and care to help you navigate challenges and thrive.
Ideally, postgraduate students and PDRAs would enjoy a buoyant phase of their scientific careers while they are free to explore science without many of the additional professional commitments that more senior academics acquire. However, as these posts are usually short term contracts and often require relocation to new cities or even countries which means creating new working and social relationships, the PhD and PDRA career phase can be extremely stressful. Financial insecurity, social isolation and uncertainty over the future can also add to the pressure of performing well but it is absolutely critical that students take care of their physical and emotional health – looking after them will ensure students get the most out of university life.
SEPnet has assembled a number of resources that you or your student colleagues may find useful.
Normally all PhD students have a supervision team of two or three academics where academic and pastoral support is available through the principal supervisor and/or through other members of the supervisory team who should have a good understanding of your project, its status and challenges.
While supervisory team members will have been appointed primarily because of their academic expertise, they have usually undertaken a doctoral supervision training course at your university. Supervisors regularly attend refresher courses and are taught about potential welfare and mental-health issues, and where to get support for their students. Besides being expected to meet with you regularly to provide academic guidance, they will look out for warning signs of mental health or other issues, but they are physicists, not mind readers or mental-health counsellors, so you may have to raise any concerns of your own volition. PDRAs can find themselves having fewer formal contacts, sometimes only the research grant holder or another senior researcher, so having other people to turn is important. The following ideas and links might be helpful.
What to do if you need help and support
Consult your supervisors or group leader, fellow students/PDRAs or the PGR Student Handbook for guidance on the services available at your institution.
Explore University websites which typically provide advice on managing anxiety, stress and other mental health problems.
Raise any concerns you may have with your student or PDRA/ECR (early career researcher) representative. Some research groups and departments have a student and PDRA representative who meet regularly with the research management team to highlight student updates, concerns and wishes to the faculty, and vice-versa. These meetings help ensure that students and PDRA voices are heard and can help shape wider-ranging support including assistance for students with disabilities, learning difficulties, and health conditions.
Where to go
All SEPnet member departments have at least a postgraduate training tutor or third party mentor who can be an alternative first point of contact in the department, for both PhD students and PDRAs.
If you do not feel comfortable raising mental-health concerns with a member of your department, you may instead approach your university’s student-support unit, student health-and-wellbeing unit or other similar service (some may be within the doctoral college) that offer a confidential service to students who have evidence of a mental-health condition. PDRAs should be able to access staff services of a similar nature.
Mental-health advisors may be able to assess your study support requirements, liaise with academic and support staff regarding support recommendations, provide advice and assistance with applying for disabled students’ allowances (DSA) if relevant and implementing the recommendations.
This could include allocating a mentor or support worker, if necessary liaising with GPs, Counsellors, or a Health Care Team and liaising with residential services over accommodation support needs.
