We Need to Talk About Mental Health in Academia
Author: Naliaka Odera
Last year, in June, a fifth-year mechanical engineering student from Kenyatta University was caught scaling a perimeter wall at State House, issuing threats against the current President of Kenya. The student was apprehended by police and taken to Kenyatta Hospital, where he was eventually transferred to a hospital that could provide mental health support. The incident ignited a conversation online about the state of mental health in Kenya’s tertiary institutions. Many remarked at the lack of institutional support by universities and schools, compounded by an especially trying workload and sense of high expectations for many students. This conversation around mental health in academia is part of a wider conversation that has come to the forefront globally in recent years. A conversation that Mawazo is keen to highlight as we develop holistic support systems for early-career African researchers.
While attending the March 2018 DAAD Higher Education conference, we heard Gladys Mosomtai, a L’oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Sub-Saharan Africa Fellow, speak about her own struggles with her mental health. We tracked her down for a more in-depth conversation on the subject. Gladys, now pursuing her PhD in International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, first started suffering from persistent distracting and sometimes negative thoughts as she was studying for her KCSE national exam. She had no clue what was going on, and could not understand why her studying kept getting interrupted by intrusive thoughts. It was many years later that she diagnosed herself with OCD. While pursuing her Masters degree, the intrusive thoughts intensified and she began to realize how tied to stress her mental health issues were.
Now, as a PhD candidate, Gladys has since learned how to live with her illness by researching it thoroughly and learning about her personal triggers, familiarizing herself with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and being gentler with herself with her schedule and work commitments. But these two experiences highlight worrying trends in higher education. When Nature magazine published a report in March 2018 surveying rates of anxiety and depression, it revealed that internationally, Masters and PhD students have six times higher rates of anxiety and depression than the general public. Even taking into account the possibility that graduate students could have higher rates of self-reporting, the numbers are still significant and concerning.
Another article by Nature released in May of this year went further in diagnosing some of the key issues that may be behind the high numbers. First, while many universities have begun to invest in mental health care and support for their undergraduate students, that has not always translated into the same kind of support for their graduate programmes. An in-depth study of UC Berkeley graduate students by the Berkeley Science Review, for instance, showed that most initiatives providing mental health support have been student-led. Second, the high-intensity workload and pressure that many PhD and Masters students experience often leads them to be overworked and overstressed, contributing to high rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.
But what do the trends for Africa, and specifically Kenya, show when it comes to the mental health of our academics? Unfortunately, there is very little data on mental health in Kenya, and much less on the mental health of graduate students. What we do have is emerging qualitative and anecdotal information. Dr. Caroline Vundi, a qualified medical doctor attached at Mathari Hospital—the only psychiatric hospital in Kenya—who currently specializes in psychiatry, shared her perspective with us.
“Anxiety would be the highest risk for postgraduate students, in my opinion. Most of these students have to juggle work and school. This is a recipe for high stress levels and as a result, anxiety.”
In our conversation with Dr. Vundi, she also stressed the importance of changing the societal view of mental health disorders. “Because of the stigma attached to it, mental health is one of the most neglected fundamental human needs,” she explained. “Stigma has repercussions on an individual level, such as poor health seeking behavior and the inevitable progression of disease, but also on a wider scale, mental health is overlooked in international development plans and donor funding.”
Dr. Vundi emphasized the need for information about mental health resources to be easily accessible, especially concerning availability, quality and cost. The stigma of mental illness in Kenya has meant that many keep quiet, but Gladys agrees that it is time for things to change. Earlier this year, she opened up on Facebook about being a high achieving academic with a secret mental illness, sharing the post with others in her academic circles.
‘Every student should have a space to talk about their issues,” she says. She looks to institutions to create safer spaces where graduates can have open conversations with each other and their supervisors about what they need by way of mental health support.
Mawazo is equally as focused on larger change. Creating supportive safe spaces for our grantees, encouraging healthy dialogue, and increasing awareness about the mental stresses that graduate students face, are all central practices in our PhD Scholars Programme. Our goal is to help further the conversation on mental health in Kenya, adding depth and nuance, so that future academics will find systems in place where they can safely talk about their mental health and receive the support they need.
If you would like to partner with us in raising awareness, or have ideas on how we can better address mental health concerns in academia, you can reach us at contact@mawazoinstitute.org.
Learn more about the World Mental Health Day 2020 here.