Managing your Mental Health during your PhD: A Survival Guide
£15.20£19.00 (-20%)
This book explores the PhD experience as never before and provides a “survival guide” for current and prospective PhD students. The book investigates why mental health issues are so common among the postgraduate population, going beyond the statistics, looking at lived experience of both the author and as well as current PhD students, who have found balancing mental wellness with the PhD endeavour challenging.
The author discusses tips and tricks she wished she had known at the start of her PhD process for managing mental health, such as managing imposter feelings, prioritising workload, and self-care strategies to help others throughout their own journey.
The book goes beyond typical mental health discussions (where the focus for improving mental health is placed on PhD students to become “more resilient”) and explores some of the often unspoken environmental factors that can impact mental health. These include the PhD student-supervisor relationship, the pressure to publish, and deep systemic problems in academia, such as racism, bullying and harassment.
Finally, the book is a call to action, providing tangible improvements from the author’s perspective that university institutions can make to ensure that academia is a place for all to thrive.
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Additional information
| Publisher | 1st ed. 2022 edition (15 Sept. 2022), Springer |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 218 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 3031141938 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-3031141935 |
| Dimensions | 15.5 x 1.27 x 23.5 cm |
by Sophie Stephens
Great book with all the mental health care and tips you could need for starting your PhD. Currently I’ve been casually reading it as I haven’t started it yet. It’s a great all rounder for managing your mental health in general though in my opinion.
My only niggle is I would have put the supervisor section at the start as you could have some say in your supervisor before you start a PhD and those tips would be useful to know first.
by Anna S
This is an excellently written guide, which goes through all the essential aspects of mental health during a PhD. It may also be useful to those at further stages in a research career – personally I was OK during my PhD because (in hindsight) I had a good support network, but I struggled during a postdoc job in another country without that network. The book rightly points out the systemic problems with academia and gives recommendations for supervisors and others with power over PhD students. I hope they all read and act on these recommendations!
by lewis piper
If nothing else this book helps you realise that you’re not alone. Thinking about it there isn’t one person I know In Academia who couldn’t do with reading this from master students to heads of departments.
A brilliant read and it helps you understand both whats going on in your situation and gives some insite into those around you. 10/10 would (and have) recommend.
by Arosha Bandara
This is a really important contribution to improving academic mental health. By writing it, Dr. Ayres provides an empathetic, authoritative and practical guide to managing mental health that is contextualised to the experience of a PhD student.
by Nik Reeves
Really valuable resource with great support and guidance to help PhD researchers through the ups and downs of their projects. Should be mandatory reading for anyone doing a PhD – or anyone supervising or supporting those who are.
by A Alexander
Although this book is aimed at PhD students, so much is applicable to any student in higher education. It’s very well written, helpful and makes a lot of good sense!
by avalon
As a PhD supervisor, this is an invaluable resource to help support PhD researchers. Would highly recommend for researchers and their supervisors!