“There is a culture of acceptance around mental health issues in academia”
“I see students forcibly removed from our sessions by their supervisors. I see leading academics decline to advertise our services, for fear that people will use them. I see students who feel like it is not OK to admit that they are not OK. And this is not OK.”
There are a lot of reasons academia has problems attracting and retaining women and people of color —and I definitely see this as one of them. Depression and anxiety and other mental health disorders are experienced by women, people of color, and members of other marginalized groups at above average rates (women are twice as likely as men to experience depression), and a system which does not provide resources for maintaining mental health will not see strong representation of those groups.
