--- blogpost: true date: April 16th, 2025 author: Jessica Woodgate category: Write Up tags: mental health --- # Data Ethics Club: [Understanding and supporting the mental health and professional quality of life of academic mental health researchers: results from a cross-sectional survey](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-025-21823-3) ```{admonition} What's this? This is summary of Wednesday 16th April’s Data Ethics Club discussion, where we spoke and wrote about the article [Understanding and supporting the mental health and professional quality of life of academic mental health researchers: results from a cross-sectional survey](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-025-21823-3) by Jacks Bennett, Nina Di Cara, and Lizzy Winstone. The summary was written by Jessica Woodgate, who tried to synthesise everyone's contributions to this document and the discussion. "We" = "someone at Data Ethics Club". Huw Day helped with the final edit. ``` ## Article Summary Mental health is [defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a state of mental well-being more than an absence of a mental health condition and experienced on a continuum](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-strengthening-our-response). Research into mental health is critical to understand, treat, and prevent mental health conditions, however, the nature of the topic entails that those conducting the research are likely to face distressing material. Consequences of working with emotionally challenging material include secondary traumatic stress (STS), the result of indirect exposure to traumatic experiences; burnout, which presents as a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion; compassion satisfaction, a positive dimension which refers to the sense of fulfilment derived from helping others and can mitigate against STS and burnout. STS and burnout have implications not just for the researcher, but also for their employers in the form of absence and decreased quality of work. Improving our understanding of the factors that influence professional quality of life will help us to protect researcher health, thereby supporting productivity and quality of research. To investigate the experience of mental health researchers, the paper quantitatively assesses the results of an online survey. Results characterise the self-reported mental health experience of researchers, and the paper uses this to examine professional quality of life and support. Findings suggest that UK mental health researchers have similar, if not higher than average, secondary trauma and burnout scores compared to frontline workers. Important socio-demographic, health, and work-related differences were found to influence the mental health experience and professional quality of life. Findings of the paper lend quantitative support to the body of qualitative evidence in mental health research, underlining the importance of supporting mental health researchers. In particular, the paper highlights the need to support for those with additional considerations such as mental health challenges or lived experience, undertaking qualitative research, or facing disabilities or chronic illness. ## Discussion Summary ### What kinds of support and training should researchers, supervisors and other university staff be receiving? Where should it come from (universities, funding bodies etc.)? We have observed practices in mental health support change over time. Previously in our workplaces, things like mentorship were more out of reach and we would need to actively seek someone to check in with. Today, channels for mental health are more accessible. We noticed a move to raise the priority of mental health care across the pandemic, as people started working remotely and were more explicitly affected by the shift in work environments. Communication between the workplace and employees improved and there was more active support to put people in touch with the right resources. Over more recent years, however, we have witnessed some of the well-being movement that happened over the pandemic starting to tail off. The kinds of support available also change across different institutions. In our industry positions, there are specific well-being roles that act as a bridge between a team and the relevant department. PhD students tend to have well-being support via their supervisors as well as university welfare teams. We have observed more resources available in city councils compared to positions we’ve held at universities, where the council was more active in its health and well-being communications. When the council laid people off, efforts were made to raise general awareness of health and link people to relevant resources. Although, it is still up to you to pursue the care. Leaving it up to the individual to seek care is not sufficient, however. Peer support is the kind of thing that can be scheduled and will be attended, but if it is left ad hoc, it will not happen. Sorting out our own coping strategies as we go may be functional at the time insofar as it enables us to continue with our work, but it does not get to the root of the problem or take the place of proper treatment. Some sort of training may be required, to teach people about the kinds of things that might come up and how they should prepare to deal with or process it. Support could also take the form of mental health plans, which identify risks and put procedures in place to make sure people get the help they need. As everybody has mental health, some of us thought that mental health plans should be put in place for everybody. What is good for one person is good for everyone, given the fact that we exist in society where peoples’ lives are intertwined. Support can be helpful across a wide range of research domains, even those that do not deal with traumatic data. Topics can unexpectedly cross over into traumatic areas and it can’t always be predicted in advance when this may happen. Even though they might not self-identify as mental health researchers, people could still be working with relevant material such as traumatic images or data. For example, those performing administrative work such as processing student requests for assignment extensions may encounter harrowing stories that can be affecting, especially if the person processing the request has had related experiences. The sudden realisation of dealing with real data can be a shock. Secondary analysis such as looking at social media posts may be less risky for the mental health of the researcher compared to direct interviews, by placing some distance between the researcher and the data. Engaging with traumatic data is something we have encountered in our own work, such as research we have conducted on survivors of domestic abuse. In our work with cancer patients, we have observed poor communication about the fact that their treatment was not effective, and they were being moved towards palliative care. We felt a shared thread of powerlessness in helping the person we are working with. Some research can be really triggering, where we have born witness to horrible experiences and felt quite helpless. This experience can be depressing if you feel your research isn’t going to make a huge impact. On paper, the promise of doing meaningful work that has impact beyond one-on-one therapy is very fulfilling. When actually carrying out the research, however, we may question its genuine impact, and whether the benefits are going where they are needed the most. Even when research isn’t performed face to face, researchers are still confined by existing systems and structures. It is crucial to have self-awareness around who the research is for and who it will benefit. Asking questions about who the research is for is particularly relevant in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that within which research is conducted, but who don’t necessarily see the benefits. [Parachute, helicopter, or colonial science](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9488789/) is a practice where researchers from highly resourced countries do research and extract data from typically low resource settings or countries without proper acknowledgement of local infrastructure and expertise. We need to be thinking about how we can change practices so that the benefits of research impact more of these communities in the future. ### While probably unavoidable, is it ethical to have researchers with mental health conditions working on mental health research? As long as the work is ethically sound, published within ethical and scientific guidelines, we don’t see an issue with researchers with mental health conditions working on mental health research. Excluding people on the basis of mental health conditions does not seem likely to work, as people with lived experience conducting research is often unavoidable. Generally, researchers tend to have some personal motivation. Most people we know that work in mental health research do have some sort of connection to it; the trope in psychology is that people are drawn to the subject because it feels relevant to them. Requiring disclosure of personal information, such as someone’s history of mental health, is problematic for a variety of reasons including privacy concerns and risk of stigmatisation. It is not appropriate for funders and management to advertise the involvement of those with lived experience, giving the appearance of inclusivity, without also providing support. Not providing support for researchers is unethical. Because of this, we felt it is better to have a blanket mental health support plan for everyone. This way, those with lived experience won’t be pressured into disclosing their history and can choose to enrich the process with their knowledge if they wish. People with lived experience should thus not be automatically prevented nor required to participate in mental health research. It is beneficial for researchers to have experience of what they are researching, but not a necessity. Co-creation could play an important part of good mental health research by bringing together people with skills but no lived experience, and people with lived experience but lacking in skills. Co-design is a useful process used in software development wherein the coder designs and develops the software whilst the client is alongside them participating in the decisions made. ### What would the next step be to enhance understanding of mental health among mental health researchers? (e.g. maybe analysis of the financial impact of absenteeism among the workforce to make the economic argument for support). Encouraging people to understand the importance and relevance of their work is a key part of better mental health support. The way research is framed is crucial for the message that it contributes as well as the researcher’s own experience of it. For quantitative research, a lot of data is needed, putting researchers in an odd situation where they need a lot of people to have particular experiences so that they have enough data to work with. Statistical power is essential to get good results. Reframing this to conceptualise the problem as hoping enough people are brave and selfless enough to share their experience for the benefit of others helps to draw attention to the main message of the work. Awareness of a project’s situatedness helps frame a project’s path to have more meaning and can be cultivated by linking research to real-world impacts or by teaching critical thinking skills. Researchers should be asking if they have a well-structured research question, what the human impact is, and how then their mental health can be supported. Critical thinking empowers people to understand the public, position their work, and link their research questions to the relevant communities. This knowledge helps identify who can help and encourage them, as well as who’s interested should be taken into account, fostering responsible research practices. In addition to understanding the wider community, developing strong critical thinking skills can help people to better understand their own mental health, and could be a route to train people to manage their own mental well-being. Some of us did not think that people can be trained directly to manage their well-being but could be trained to build support networks around themselves. One path towards stronger self-management is by providing people with better words to describe how they are feeling, such as [“microaggressions”](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/microaggression) and [“moral distress”](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6506903/). As these terms enter the research vernacular, people are more able to express themselves. Toolkits of resources can help people to deal with difficult thoughts. Distress protocols additionally should be in place for both researchers and patients, ensuring that caring for yourself throughout the process is written into the protocol. When putting procedures in place, it’s important to recognise that not everybody is open to receiving support. Pushback from the study participants included older people who resisted any support because they did not feel that they needed it. People form their own coping strategies; even if those coping strategies are not healthy, people may be unwilling to change. In some of our own experience involving case studies with traumatic content we found we were mostly able to separate the situation from the data and identified support in reflecting on the impact of our work from friends who were experts in related areas. ### What change would you like to see on the basis of this piece? Who has the power to make that change? The results of this paper could be applied to inform the design of departmental end of year surveys to help those surveys get better data. Impaired mental health impacts the quality and quantity of peoples’ work, which has a financial impact for the organisation. It is not enough for people to struggle through their work, not fulfilling their potential. The study is limited, however, insofar as the sample is heavily skewed female. Future research could incorporate more representative studies or specific grounds such as adolescents. ## Attendees - Huw Day, Data Scientist, University of Bristol: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/huw-day/), [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/huwwday.bsky.social) - [Jessica Woodgate](https://jessica-woodgate.github.io/), PhD Student, University of Bristol - Nina Di Cara, Honorary Snr Research Associate/Data Scientist - Euan Bennet, Lecturer, University of Glasgow: [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/dreuanbennet.bsky.social) - Christina Palantza, PhD student, University of Bristol - Amy Joint, Programme Manager, BMC - ISRCTN clinical study registry [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyjoint) - Brian Sullivan, Epidemiologist - Hertfordshire County Council, and Honorary Fellow in Population Health Sciences University of Bristol - Natalie Pafitis, Team Manager BMC Series journals and Senior Editor, BMC Public Health - [Kamilla Wells](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamilla-wells/), Citizen Developer, Australian Public Service, Brisbane---visiting Bristol