The SENSE Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) brings you ‘Not another wellbeing workshop...’ with the aim of enabling open discussions about wellbeing and mental health in the PGR community. 1 in 2 PhD students struggle with mental health during their PhD and a recent survey of PGRs in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Leeds showed that 85% of students surveyed reported their mental wellbeing to be moderately to severely affected in the past year. However, over 60% of those affected have not sought support for their mental health.

Have you struggled with your wellbeing whilst being a PGR? Not sure how to help your colleagues who may be struggling?

This workshop will share the resources available at the University and externally along with sharing the experiences of past and present PGRs through two panel discussions.

The first the panel will discuss their own experiences of struggles during their postgraduate research. You will have the opportunity to anomalously share your own experiences and concerns on our padlet walls (a virtual note board). The second panel will discuss tips and tricks that have helped them, and you will be again encouraged to use our padlet wall to contribute to this discussion and share your own ideas. The panel are not experts on mental health, they are your peers sitting on the virtual desk next to you! We hope that by discussing personal experiences in event created by PGRs for PGRs, we can start an important conversation in our PGR community that creates a happier, healthier and supportive peer network that we will all benefit from.

At the end of the discussion session, we have invited the University of Leeds counselling service to present the services and professional support that is available for you to access at any time. You can find information about these resources here at the University of Leeds, and here at the University of Edinburgh.

There will be virtual coffee breaks to have a breather and a good old chat (BYO virtual tea, coffee and cake strongly recommended!). Throughout the week following the event there will be a couple of opportunities to have coffee breaks to chat with some of the panellists about anything that may come up or if you just want to decompress over the rest of the week.

This workshop is strictly for PGRs to aid open discussion of issues, which may not be achieved, with more senior staff present. Any key themes and anonymised statistics from polls etc. might be shared with management teams to help move towards more open discussions around mental health and the academic environment. Whilst the panel will be discussing their own personal struggles, this event is not a place to get individualised help for specific issues you may be dealing with, but we will direct you to places and people who can.

The event will run through zoom webinars and will not require you to disclose any of your personal details. We have used padlet walls to enable anonymity for all those attending and contributing their own experiences. Please remember to be kind with anything you post. During the event there may be polls used to gauge the feeling in the ‘virtual room’, but these will only show the stats output and no result will be traceable back to you.

Please do not attend the workshop if you feel the likely topics will be triggering to you. Please put you own mental health and safety first even if this means changing your mind last minute.

Not another wellbeing workshop… for PGRs by PGRs