23rd August 2021 1pm-3pm
Ticket link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/not-another-wellbeing-workshop-for-pgrs-by-pgrs-tickets-163029582871
Organising committee: Heather Selley and Fran Morris
Whilst not everyone struggles with their mental health as a PGR, a large proportion do. We are committed to creating safe spaces where our students can come together and not suffer alone.
Next month, PhD students at the University of Leeds in collaboration with SENSE bring you ‘Not another wellbeing workshop…’ with the aim of enabling open discussions about wellbeing and mental health in the Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs) community. 1 in 2 PhD students struggle with mental health during their PhD and a recent survey of PGRs in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Leeds showed that 85% of students surveyed reported their mental wellbeing to be moderately to severely affected in the past year. However, over 60% of those affected have not sought support for their mental health.
This workshop will share the resources available at the University and externally along with sharing the experiences of past and present PGRs through two panel discussions.
The first the panel will discuss their own experiences of struggles during their postgraduate research. You will have the opportunity to anomalously share your own experiences and concerns on our padlet walls (a virtual note board). The second panel will discuss tips and tricks that have helped them, and you will be again encouraged to use our padlet wall to contribute to this discussion and share your own ideas. The panel are not experts on mental health – they are your peers sitting on the virtual desk next to you! We hope that by discussing personal experiences in event created by PGRs for PGRs, we can start an important conversation in our PGR community that creates a happier, healthier and supportive peer network that we will all benefit from.
At the end of the discussion session, we have invited the University of Leeds Student Counselling and Wellbeing service to present the services and professional support that is available for you to access at any time. You can find information about these resources here at the University of Leeds, and here at the University of Edinburgh.
There will be virtual coffee breaks to have a breather and a good old chat (BYO virtual tea, coffee and cake strongly recommended!). Throughout the week following the event there will be a couple of opportunities to have coffee breaks to chat with some of the panellists about anything that may come up or if you just want to decompress over the rest of the week.
While we are aiming to provide a safe and supportive space for PGRs who have struggled with their mental health, this is also very much open to anyone who has not. It can be an opportunity to learn more about the issues your peers might be struggling with too, and how to best support them through some of the common challenges that are faced while doing a PhD. Through conversation with those of us who struggle more and less with these issues, we hope to help reduce some of the stigma associated with discussing these issues amongst PGRs.
This workshop is strictly for PGRs to aid open discussion of issues, which may not be achieved, with more senior staff present. Any key themes and anonymised statistics from polls etc. might be shared with management teams to help move towards more open discussions around mental health and the academic environment. Whilst the panel will be discussing their own personal struggles, this event is not a place to get individualised help for specific issues you may be dealing with, but we will direct you to places and people who can.
The event will run through zoom webinars and will not require you to disclose any of your personal details. We have used padlet walls to enable anonymity for all those attending and contributing their own experiences. Please remember to be kind with anything you post. During the event there may be polls used to gauge the feeling in the ‘virtual room’, but these will only show the stats output and no result will be traceable back to you.
Please do not attend the workshop if you feel the likely topics will be triggering to you. Please put you own mental health and safety first even if this means changing your mind last minute. Ticket link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/not-another-wellbeing-workshop-for-pgrs-by-pgrs-tickets-163029582871
