Symposium on Researcher Well-being in Mental Health Research

Researchers working in mental health research and emotionally challenging topic areas need support to do their work well. 

At this symposium you will hear newly emerging results from four research teams who have been building a body of evidence on what researchers in this space want and need, and how their work impacts them. Attendees will also hear about a new initiative to grow institutional support for researchers and learn how to support this in their contexts and institutions. 

The symposium will be in-person in Bristol, from 11am-3pm and lunch will be provided. 

The programme of talks can be seen below.

Who is this event for?

This event is free and open to all, but will be especially relevant to those who:

• work in mental health research, or other challenging areas. 
• manage researchers working in these areas. 
• have oversight of staff well-being services. 
• make policy decisions within universities.

Travel support

We are able to support travel for Early Career Researchers (broadly defined) so please get in touch if you would like to make use of this.

This event is sponsored by Research England through the University of Bristol's Enhancing Research Culture programme. 

Programme

The symposium will feature four talks from recent work on researcher well-being. These will be:

What do we know about the well-being of Mental Health Researchers? Results from a UK-wide study

Dr Lizzy Winstone - University of Bristol
Lizzy is a mixed methods researcher interested in young people's mental health, well-being and self-harm. Lizzy has been working on a study using intensive longitudinal methods to explore self-harm and suicidal thoughts in daily life. Lizzy is a Churchill Fellow and about to start an SPHR postdoctoral fellowship with a focus on social media literacy and young people's well-being.

Dr Jacks Bennett - University of Bristol
Jacks is a psychologist and public health researcher interested in mental wellbeing in higher education. Jacks’ research is focused on prevalence and trends in student wellbeing as well as health, social and educational factors related to both wellbeing, mental health disclosure, and student outcomes. Jacks is currently an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow.

Dr Nina Di Cara - University of Bristol
Nina uses data science methods to study longitudinal mental health using digital footprint data, exploring novel data sources from social media and music. She also co-leads Data Ethics Club and the Data Hazards project. Nina previously worked as a Child Protection Social Worker and is interested in how institutional structures can support or hinder researcher well-being.

What are UK-based academic mental health researchers experiences of managing their own mental health within the workplace? Preliminary findings from a qualitative online survey. 

Dr Ruth Naughton-Doe - University of York
Ruth is an applied perinatal mental health researcher specialising in the co-design and co-evaluation of interventions to address the social determinants of mental ill health and loneliness. She is a lived-experiences researcher and an NIHR Three Schools Mental Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School for Business & Society, University of York.

Dr Beth Bareham - Newcastle University
Dr Beth Bareham is a ACRC Senior Research Fellow at Newcastle University Population Health Sciences. Her main research focus is understanding how to support older adults to live happier and healthier lives; particularly more marginalised populations, and those with mental health problems and addictions. Beth held a NIHR Three Research Schools Mental Health Programme Post-Doctoral Fellowship and is an alumna of the NIHR Mental Health Research Incubator Grow Programme.

As part of this activity, Beth and Ruth reflected on the potential vulnerabilities of mental health researchers and the need to understand these to inform how to promote researcher wellbeing. They commenced a research study to explore this issue, with support from the wider GROW programme.

Studying Suicide in Rural Sri Lanka: Preliminary Insights into Researcher Wellbeing

Dr. Melissa Pearson - University of Edinburgh
Melissa is a social science researcher working at the University of Edinburgh. She has been working directly with the South Asian Clinical Toxicology Research Collaboration for more than 15 years on a variety of community-based research projects in Sri Lanka. Projects have focused on mental health, suicide prevention, substance misuse, policy, and global health. She has interests in complex interventions, implementation science, behaviour change and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Dr Tharindi Udalagama - University of Edinburgh
Tharindi Udalagama presently serves as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Cardiovascular Science, University of Edinburgh, and holds an Honorary Fellowship within the Department of Anthropology at Durham University. In 2014, she was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to pursue her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Durham University, successfully completing it in 2019. Throughout the period from 2012 to 2023, she held teaching positions as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Colombo.

The Researcher Wellbeing Project: Findings, Recommendations and Resources 

Dr Tina Skinner - University of Bath 
Dr Tina Skinner has worked in the field of gender-based violence since 1993, initially in a women’s refuge, then as a PhD student and academic. As a disabled and neurodiverse person herself, she has also undertaken leading studies on the intersection of dis-ability and gender, and the impacts on work and wellbeing. Tina is currently leading the Researcher Wellbeing Project (funded by the UKRI Research England Research Culture Fund) and GW4RWELL (the Great Western 4 Researcher Wellbeing Evidence and Learning Lab). She is also a founding member of the Researcher Wellbeing Strategic Change Group. Tina provides training on researcher wellbeing and emotionally challenging topics.