Mental Health in Academia – Status-quo and Practical Implications for Early Career Researchers’ Wellbeing

Although many academics love their research and experience fulfilment from various tasks of their profession, mounting evidence suggests that working in academia might contribute to mental health problems. We at Scholar Minds (www.scholar-minds.net), a group of early-career researchers (ECRs) of Berlin’s universities and research institutions, strive to ensure the mental health of Berlin’s early career researchers by improving the status-quo on an individual and institutional level. Based on our Scholar Minds surveys, we will first provide an overview of ECRs’ current mental health status. Secondly, we want to unravel unhelpful thoughts and habits which ultimately impact ECRs’ mental health and show how to build helpful habits to overcome challenging times.