12:00 “A mental health perspective in Spain: an unknown emerging problem”
María Emilia Rodríguez Rodríguez (psychiatrist in mental health, Requena Center, Spain)
Abstract:
Stressful style of life is related with the increase of stress related psychopathologies in all populations. However, not all populations have the same risk: there exist stressful situations that can trigger mental disorder in vulnerable persons. If the stress is high enough and continued, it may provoke problems in people with no mental vulnerability too. One of this kind of situations is detected in a high emotional demand environment as the scientific one, where results are not often immediate or they are not the expected ones.
Scientists are sometimes poorly recognized in Spain. Both their working and salary conditions are often precarious. Scientists spend many hours in a lonely work environment in detriment of family and leisure time. The lack of social life causes more vulnerability to suffer mental diseases. In this talk we will learn about the situation of anxiety and other stress-related problems in the scientific and university population.
12:30: "Mental Health in Academia: a Graduate Student Perspective"
Andrea J. Welsh (Physics Graduate Research Assistant, Georgia Institute of Technology)
Abstract:
Depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental illnesses are known to affect
graduate students disproportionately, possibly due to issues of gender, lack of
mentorship, poor work-life balance, and other factors. In this talk, I will discuss what mental health is, some factors that affect mental health, and offer possible suggestions about how to create a community that is overall more inclusive. Finally, pulling from my own experiences in the physics Ph.D. program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, I will discuss the difficulties that I, as well as other graduate students, face, the resources that I have used for support, and
how I found a comfortable balance between my work and self-care.
