Creating Research Environments that foster Mental Health and Wellbeing

The Third Half: A Pilot Study Using Evidence-Based Psychological Strategies to Promote Well-Being among Doctoral Students

“…The results motivate us to continue working together, with different local, national, and international teams, to overcome the so-called “PhD crisis” [ 3 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 13 , 14 , 15 ] and to keep on developing psychosocial programs that promote the well-being and mental health, not only of doctoral students, but of the entire research and academic community. National alliances such as the Catalan Net of Healthy Universities (including nine universities) [ 33 ] and international, such as the EuniWell (an alliance of eight European Universities) [ 75 ], the ARK-program (23 Norwegian and Swedish Universities) [ 76 ] or the ReMO project [ 1 ] are already leading the change by implementing strategic actions, research plans and policy imperatives towards building healthier research and academic environments [ 25 ]. These alliances are building a framework for the processual work with organizational mental health and well-being research in doctoral education, focusing and highlighting the need of preparation, screening, development of action plans, implementation, and evaluation of interventions.…”

“…In the case of the present study, the voluntary efforts of local university teams allowed the implementation of the program; however, it is concluded that more institutional effort is needed, as well as investments in replicating, structuring, and standardizing actions as permanent and sustainable services that favour the optimal development of ECRs in their workplace. These training services are not yet widespread within the ERA, in part because their implementation depends mostly on grants and projects to perform these actions [ 1 , 2 , 24 , 25 ]. Even though some pioneering universities are responding to European policies at a local level, collective efforts must continue to be made to guarantee the implementation of the European Charter and the Code of Conduct for Researchers [ 37 ].…”

“…The main reasons for this high dropout rate points to the difficulty of reconciling doctoral studies with personal and professional life (25%), social isolation (20%), demotivation (19%) or lack of institutional support (40%) [ 20 , 21 ]. Therefore, the implementation and assessment of top-down programs that promote more motivating, sustainable, and healthy work environments in doctoral studies should be a strategic priority for the ERA universities, as it is a long-sought demand of the entire community of doctoral students [ 1 , 2 , 24 , 25 , 26 ].…”

“…In this context, doctoral schools and universities are starting to implement well-being programs that complement technical training [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ], but these programs are not yet generalised since it is first necessary to create synergies of coordination between administrative teams and doctoral studies staff at a local level. These actions should necessarily be focused on structuring and guaranteeing more psychosocial services and training to upskill students and employees in well-being and mental health management, and ultimately, to foster the organisational culture and working climates where young researchers develop [ 4 , 5 , 21 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. Therefore, more institutional investment is needed to implement sustainable services and evidence-based training that upskills ECR in well-being and mental health management at their workplace.…”

“…Therefore, more institutional investment is needed to implement sustainable services and evidence-based training that upskills ECR in well-being and mental health management at their workplace. These training services are not yet widespread in the ERA, in part because their implementation depends mostly on grants and projects [ 1 , 2 , 25 ]. Furthermore, although there is a growing number of descriptive studies and some reviews on the current situation of ECRs’ mental health [ 3 , 32 ], a gap still exists in the implementation and quality assessment of institutional interventions targeted at increasing researchers’ well-being and mental health management; published studies are generally qualitative and only use some strategies such as online support [ 29 ], mentoring or coaching [ 2 , 30 , 31 ].…”