Introduction
EURAXESS aims to enhance the career development of researchers while addressing barriers to international mobility. As part of this mission, supporting researchers' mental health is essential for fostering sustainable and attractive research careers. Mental health initiatives not only improve individual researchers' well-being and performance but also strengthen institutional human resources policies, making them more competitive and resilient.
This tool aligns with recommendations from the European Council, which advocates for expanding holistic approaches to talent development. By integrating mental health into broader talent development strategies, research institutions can address the organizational and individual factors that influence researchers’ well-being and career trajectories.
The concept of mental health adopted in this tool goes beyond addressing mental illness. Instead, it embraces a holistic approach, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO):
“Mental health is a state of well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community.”
By using this tool, institutions take a proactive step toward enhancing the mental health and well-being of researchers.
Key elements
This tool is built on a set of indicators covering different aspects of what institutions can undertake to support the mental health of researchers, from leadership and governance aspects to implementation of activities and policies and quality control measures. The tool also aims to serve as a source of inspiration for institutional improvement towards initiatives that support the mental health of researchers.
The 8 areas that institutions will be encouraged to evaluate are:
- Policy & leadership
- Coordination & collaboration
- Co-Design & planning
- Promotion
- Prevention
- Care & intervention
- Visibility & accessibility
- Monitoring, Quality Control & Impact
Why to use this tool?
Using a self-assessment tool for mental health support in research institutions and higher education institutions (HEIs) is crucial for several key reasons:
- To improve awareness and engagement about mental health or researchers
- To identify researchers’ mental health needs and gaps in support mechanisms
- To provide data for data driven decisions
- To tailor support on mental health to the research environment
- To promote a culture of well-being
- To support researcher retention and success
- To align with institutional well-being goals
- To facilitate collaboration and sharing best practices
How to use this tool?
There are several key questions in order to take the most out of this tool:
The tool is designed to be taken by multiple stakeholders within an institution such: individuals responsible for mental health departments, health departments, individuals responsible for labour risk prevention , HR staff, and leaders responsible for researchers, directors of researchers’ units, and representatives of R1-R4 researchers. One single individual or a sole department’s institutional approach would not render in effective use of the tool.
Due to the diversity of stakeholders that this tool requires, we recommend creating a working group formed by the previously mentioned unit’s representatives and a coordinator figure with a full understanding of the tool. The common characteristic of this group of people is that they should be able to compile the information required by the tool.
We do not recommend this working group to answer the tool’s questions abruptly but rather in a coordinated way that will allow for enough self-reflection and connection with relevant stakeholders. The goal of this tool is to create awareness among research institutions’ stakeholders through questions that are intended to encourage focused conversations about mental health of researchers
The selected stakeholders will need to rate each of the area or subarea’s items from 1 to 5, based on the following statements:
- 0. The topic/issue has not been addressed yet.
- 1. The topic has been researched, but it remains a major challenge, and practices have not been developed yet.
- 2. The topic has been researched, there has been a planification, but there still no clear outputs in place.
- 3. The topic is understood, and pilot activities have been undertaken.
- 4. The topic is well-understood, and some actions have been implemented.
- 5.We master this topic, we have implemented activities which yield positive effects, and, in general, we have good practice to share regarding this area.
As for the frequency, we recommend recurring every 2 to 5 years, except for the kickoff when we recommend a mid-term revision a year after. The length will depend on the maturity of the institution. It is also important to consider the individual research institutions’ characteristics regarding the processing time of their internal resources and to adjust the frequency of the tool to each institution.
At the same time, the results will not be saved or used by us in any case. The numbers obtained out of this tool are not intended to serve as an evaluation measure or ranking.
Guided questionnaire
Collaborations
Collaborations have been established to be able to develop this tool at different stages. First talks with coordinator of REMO COST Action and other partcipants of their network took place to frame and prioritize the approach to the tool, regarding the mental health and well-being of researchers.
To gather information and, most important, to test the tool, collaboration with the network of Spanish Health Promoter Universities (REUPS), a working group of the Spanish Conference of Rectors (CRUE) was established. Within this network, a more intense conllaboration was established with its Emotional well-being expert working group. French-EURAXESS network was also relevant in testing and providing feedback for improvement of the tool.
The Center for Biomedical Engineering Research (CBER) at the Portuguese INES-TEC was also key for designing the scope and make the tool useful for institutions.