In a recent blog post, Meghan Duffy—chair of Rackham Graduate School’s Student Mental Health Task Force—outlined the major themes and key factors impacting graduate student mental health at U-M.
Following two town hall meetings and numerous one-on-one conversations between task force members and U-M graduate students, mentors, and mental health professionals, as well as a review of past findings from other institutions, Duffy pointed out five major themes that will help guide the task force’s work over its two-year lifespan:
- Mentoring and navigating the mentoring relationship
- Department/programmatic requirements, expectations, and culture
- Training and resources for individual students
- Access to care and other resources
- Other topics
The fifth theme encompasses such topics as imposter syndrome, perfectionism, a mental health ally program, physical exercise, isolation, and financial stress.
Duffy concludes with an invitation, asking anyone with additional information, or who has noticed further issues raised by the themes already laid out, to contact the task force.
Read the full post at Duffy’s blog, Dynamic Ecology.