The realm of academia, once held in high esteem as a fortress of knowledge and intellectual growth, finds itself grappling with a pressing issue—the pervasive mental health crisis and toxic culture that now permeate its hallowed halls. A growing number of faculty and students are finding the courage to speak out about the mounting levels of depression, stress, anxiety, and even thoughts of surrendering to the relentless struggles. It’s disheartening that graduate students are confronted with depression and anxiety at a staggering rate six times higher than that of the general population. And it’s not only students, every fifth faculty member reports that they suffer from anxiety or depression.
Recent studies and opinion pieces blame a toxic academic culture. People are paid too little, work too much, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are under attack in the U.S., and aside from that cutthroat working environments where many also endure bullying and harassment make it exceedingly challenging to maintain one’s mental well-being.
This may be painful to hear: We are all contributing to the toxicity.
We include ourselves! It’s incredibly challenging to get out of old beliefs and habits around working more and more and stressing when things are not fully under control or someone on the team isn’t productive. We know very few team leaders or chairs who have learned to appropriately behave when they are triggered or under immense pressure.
The challenge is that these stressors can quickly turn your good intentions into a toxic work environment. In fact, it’s much easier to unintentionally create a toxic environment than it is to nurture a safe one.
When Stefanie first started her research team in 2016, she made a few mistakes that when left unchecked can create toxicity:
💡 Her expectations were not as clear as she thought they were. When people didn’t do the thing, she would get frustrated instead of asking questions.
💡 When mistakes happened or people didn’t do what they were supposed to, she used a punitive feedback style. Not because that is effective but because she didn’t know better. It is what she had seen mentors and other key people in her life do and that is fact how most of us “learn” leadership.
💡 When she was stressed or her fears got triggered, she used to get frustrated easily, assigned blame, or got short with the team instead of acknowledging the actual root cause of her feeling and talking to the team about taht as appropriate.
💡 She didn’t quite know what to do with folks who were productive but displayed unacceptable behaviors toward other team members until she figured out how to teach them alternative behaviors.
💡She used to think good leadership is being tolerant and generous even when people make mistakes or cross boundaries. But then stuff would accumulate until she eventually had enough and used said punitive feedback style. Then she felt like she bounced from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, followed by feeling bad about herself. Instead it’s more useful to provide feedback on an ongoing basis even in small things. Then emotions don’t run high and everyone knows where they stand.
💡She operated on a lot of beliefs about what it takes to be successful in academia, like the one that you are only successful if you work long hours, weekends, Holidays. They came mostly from others with no data to support them. She’d get nervous (actually still does) when people take an easy-going approach to work. Instead, examine those belief, read up on the actual data (or let us do that for you.
There’s nothing particularly special or sinister about these emotions or behaviors. We all have our flavors of them. Your go-to stress emotion may not be frustration but it is something. The problem isn’t that we are experiencing feelings, the problem is that most of us (we almost want to say “none of us” but there’s always an exception, so…), how to discharge them without hurting others or ourselves (hint: stuffing them down isn’t an option either, that will hurt you in the long run)
But if you want to take a stand against toxic cultures, you need to start with yourself.
This is your biggest leverage point, the (only) one you have full control over.
Work on your self-regulation, your ability to control and manage your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors based on internal standards, societal norms, and situational demands. Self-regulation encompasses several cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes:
- Self-awareness: The ability to recognize and understand your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
- Self-monitoring: Paying attention to your actions and assessing their alignment with goals and standards.
- Impulse control: Managing and resisting your immediate urges or impulses, delaying gratification, and making thoughtful decisions.
- Emotional regulation: Identifying, understanding, and managing your emotions in adaptive ways.
- Goal-setting: Establishing clear objectives and working towards them.
- Planning and problem-solving: Developing strategies and action plans to achieve goals and overcome challenges.
- Flexibility: Being adaptable and open to changing circumstances or perspectives.
- Self-reflection: Engaging in introspection and self-evaluation to gain insights into your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Self-regulation is crucial for various aspects of life, including personal well-being, academic and professional success, and maintaining healthy relationships. If more of us mastered this aspect of ourselves, our culture would be in a better place.
And then there are the systems that add to the toxicity…
Academia prides itself on its merit system, a system of evaluating and rewarding individuals based on their academic achievements, qualifications, skills, and contributions to the field. While the merit system in academia has its benefits, especially for some groups of people, it has a lot of flaws:
- Subjectivity and bias: Despite efforts to establish objective criteria, evaluations of merit is influenced by subjective judgments and biases. Personal preferences, cultural biases, and unconscious biases can affect decisions, leading to unfair outcomes and disparities.
- Narrow focus on certain metrics: Merit evaluations often prioritize specific quantitative measures, such as publication counts or citation metrics, which do not fully capture the quality, impact, or diversity of scholarly contributions. This leads to an overemphasis on quantity over depth or innovation.
- Neglect of teaching and service: The merit system tends to heavily prioritize research achievements, sometimes at the expense of teaching and service. This undervalues the important role of educators and the broader contributions individuals make to their academic communities.
- Overemphasis on competition: The merit system fosters a competitive academic culture, which prioritizes individual achievement and self-interest over collaboration and collective progress. This leads to increased pressure, stress, and a lack of cooperation among academics.
- Cumulative advantage and inequality: Early career researchers and individuals from marginalized groups face disadvantages due to limited resources, opportunities, and networks. The merit system perpetuates existing inequalities and favors those who already have a head start.
And this is one of the main reasons for the sluggishness of institutional change.
Individuals in positions of power benefit personally from the existing system. Department chairs, deans, certain faculty, and other senior management often enjoy financial advantages, enhanced reputation, and other perks that come with the current situation.
Unfortunately, this can create a significant barrier to promoting meaningful change as these individuals may be detached from the struggles and experiences of colleagues and trainees and are personally incentivised to keep things the way they are.
Of course, there are also many leaders who are in favor of and support the change, but they struggle to accomplish something for the next reason, the complex nature of the problem itself.
The mental health crisis and toxic culture in academia is a problem of many dimensions. It would be overly simplistic to pinpoint a single root cause. The challenges encompass various interrelated factors, systemic and individual, which make it difficult to determine where exactly to initiate the necessary transformations. Tackling one aspect alone is not sufficient (but start with yourself because that is your biggest leverage point!).
The issues plaguing academia do not arise solely from the actions or decisions of one individual. Rather, they arise from our collective participation within a flawed system. Many individuals within the academic ecosystem find themselves merely following orders, absolving themselves of personal responsibility for the outcomes of their actions. This is really scary, because in school in Germany we learned that this enabled the rise of facism. It is also the reason we won’t stop talking about the issues we see at our institutions even if that may come at a cost. Because: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” (attribution unclear).
This diffusion of responsibility creates a significant obstacle when it comes to assigning accountability and rallying for sweeping, systemic change.
Also, change is not a quick fix. Simply designating someone as a “mental health officer” or implementing superficial measures will not yield substantial improvements in and of itself. Meaningful change demands both time and concerted effort. Consider your own personal growth, for instance. Mere awareness of what needs to be done is insufficient. It requires acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge through dedicated training, and that takes time. The same principle applies to transforming the current academic system.
Now, it’s the perfect moment to delve into potential solutions at the systems-level. However, we’ve made a deliberate choice to leave you on a cliffhanger and save the discussion of solutions for a future blog post. We must confess, this decision serves not only to heighten your excitement and curiosity, but also because time has slipped through our fingers. And this post is getting lengthy.
In the meantime, you can immerse yourself further in the topic by exploring the articles below or, even better, practice your self-regulation.
Stay tuned…
Robert & Stefanie
- “Feeling overwhelmed by academia? You are not alone” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04998-1
- “The mental health of PhD researchers demands urgent attention” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03489-1
- “The Mental Health Crisis in Academia”
https://www.ecn-berlin.de/mental-health/the-mental-health-crisis-in-academi.html - “Universities must overhaul the toxic working culture for academic researchers” https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jan/15/universities-must-overhaul-the-toxic-working-culture-for-academic-researchers
- “Academics are toxic. We need a new culture” https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2021/02/academics-are-toxic-we-need-a-new-culture
- “A mental-health crisis is gripping science — toxic research culture is to blame” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01708-4.
- “Pandemic is amplifying the toxic aspects of academia.” https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-views-of-the-uk-2020-5-pandemic-is-amplifying-the-toxic-aspects-of-academia/
- “Toxic academic culture and what we can do to fix it” https://theoracle.glenbrook225.org/opinions/2021/11/12/toxic-academic-culture-and-what-we-can-do-to-fix-it/
“The Toxic Cultures of the Academic World” https://www.kompas.id/baca/english/2023/05/08/the-toxic-cultures-of-the-academic-world.