Poster can be found in location 46.

Academia is a fast-paced, highly competitive work environment. Particularly in the last decade, academic staff had to juggle the increasing demands of attracting external funding with job insecurity and higher teaching loads. These changes affect both physical and mental health. A number of studies indicate that academic staff are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety than the general population. Studies on how academic staff cope with mental health struggles are sparse. The small body of research is concentrated on early-career scholars and higher academic institutions in North America and the United Kingdom. Moreover, research points to a reluctance to disclose mental health struggles. The extent to which academic staff meets expectations „set by themselves, colleagues, or the system as a whole“ affects „their sense of identity as an academic, and thus their sense of belonging to the academic community“ (Nicholls et al., 2022, p. 15). Decisions to not disclose mental health conditions serve as a means of self-preservation and identity management (Brown & Leigh, 2018, based on Goffman, 1990). However, without an open discourse on mental health and well-being, an image of the academic as infallible is perpetuated. A reliance on individual coping strategies limits the development of better structures and tools of support for staff members. This presentation concentrates on an interdisciplinary literature review as a basis for developing a research agenda on mental health and well-being in academia on all levels of seniority - with a particular focus on the Nordic countries. To address questions of mental health and well-being holistically, empirical research and practical recommendations need to focus on both preventive and curative care. Moreover, they need to take the individual characteristics of a diverse workforce into consideration. Person-centred care provides a well-suited approach to advancing (research on) mental health in academia.