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in my university. People would come to workshops and be very enthusiastic and write it all down but then go away and not do any of the things we talked about. I was intrigued as to why people don’ t do what they’ re supposed to do.
That’ s when I started researching psychology, in particular about why highachieving people weren’ t doing what they were saying they wanted to do. And I started working with PhD students in that area.
As we started working more closely with the students, all the other issues started to emerge – usually not laziness or anything like that, but the circumstances they found themselves in. Then some of them mentioned health issues relating to this.
So I moved more into that area and spent the last 10 or 15 years looking at how supervisors and the whole research higher degree system could be more supportive of research students.
Nowhere to turn
Undermined, humiliated and alone – the research students struggling to stay afloat.
Hugh Kearns interviewed by Loren Smith
A study of more than 3600 PhD students in Belgium found that over a third – well above the proportion in comparison groups – were at high risk of having or developing a psychiatric disorder, especially depression.
Competing work / life demands, supervisor leadership style, team decision-making culture, and career perceptions all correlated with illness incidence.
There are many more studies like this, but if that isn’ t sufficient to prove the problem’ s existence, the University of Melbourne just rolled out a program to address the mental health of graduate research students.
Incidentally or not, this was also the subject of Hugh Kearns’ s plenary address at the recent 13th Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference in Adelaide.
Kearns, a lecturer and researcher at Flinders University and co-founder of ThinkWell, a cognitive behavioural coaching company, acknowledges that although some people are innately more susceptible to mental ill-health, graduate research conditions can exacerbate pre-existing tendencies, or even trigger new ones.
Nevertheless, for such students, there’ s hope. A specialist in peak performance and positive psychology, Kearns says that, within limits, and the help of others, minds can be healed. Campus Review spoke with him to learn more.
CR: I thought we could start with your personal experience, if that’ s relevant, because I assume you’ ve done a PhD yourself? HK: Interestingly, I often get promoted to‘ Dr Kearns’, but I have two master’ s degrees, not a PhD. However, I’ ve spent the last 25 years working with PhD students.
Why did you choose this field of study? I got into this area by accident. I used to run the staff development and training
You mentioned that in doing this research over the last 15 years, you’ ve come across certain things that produce negative effects in these students. Can you talk about these? The one that’ s probably top of my list is what I call the‘ toxic’ supervisor. These are not poor supervisors or bad supervisors. They are toxic. They are very bad people to be around. They will criticise your work mercilessly, humiliate you in public, never provide any support, leave you completely on your own, and go out of their way to undermine your confidence and progress. The way you know them is the trail of broken students around them: the people who start enthusiastically and then, a year later or whatever, are broken and do something else.
The number of these toxic supervisors is very small, but they have a huge impact on the lives of certain students. These people should not be supervising, and if you know of them, something needs to be done to stop them directly supervising students – put them in a panel where there are other people around, or find some way of protecting the students. It’ s wrong to let students be supervised by these people. They are very likely to cause them stress, distress and probably mental health issues. So, that’ s one: the toxic supervisor.
The second one is the supervisor who, while not toxic, is very busy. These supervisors have so many things to do that the student becomes but a small part of their workload. These supervisors are
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