Mental health in academia: risks and strategies to take into account

Presentation at the MCAA AC 2026, Brussels.

The presentation discusses the critical prevalence of mental health challenges in academia, noting that between 32% and 42% of academic employees are at risk of developing a common psychiatric disorder. It identifies numerous factors contributing to this crisis, including the "Publish or Perish Culture," Impostor Syndrome, financial difficulties, social isolation, and the complex administrative burden associated with third-party funding. To address these issues, the presentation highlights the work of the Researcher Mental Health Observatory (ReMO) and the development of the STAIRCASE survey, alongside several innovation projects such as OSCAR and PeerPower, which focus on developing open-access courses, AI-supported personalized learning, and peer-support communities for researcher well-being and career development.

The links to the projects and initiatives discussed are:

• ReMO Manifesto: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5559806
   
• ReMO Zenodo Community: https://zenodo.org/communities/remo?page=1&size=20
   
• ReMO Podcasts: https://projects.tib.eu/remo/activities/podcasts/
   
• STAIRCASE Project Information: https://projects.tib.eu/staircase/about-us-1-1
   
• STAIRCASE Survey Preprint: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ghse5_v1
   
• OSCAR Project: https://oscar-ai.eu/
   
• PeerPower Project: https://projects.tib.eu/peerpower/about-the-project 
   
• Design your Research Environment/Summer School: https://oeduverse.eu/