I happened to glance at the blog stats and noticed a sudden upsurge in page views and especially from North America. Googling around I found that The Professor Is In (Karen L Kelsky) mentioned this blog on her facebook page.
We are a very new blog, founded a month ago. We are not mental health professionals in any way, just people in academia with depression or just thoughts about depression. We want there to be a place where people can open up about the issue either with their real names or not.
While normally I think Mikael's posts are wonderful, I'm going to point you at my first post on the blog, where I explain why this blog should exist even though we don't claim academia and depression have particular links.
One thing that comes up sometimes: it may well be easier to be open about issues like depression when you are already safe in a tenured position. Of the three post authors so far, two are tenured professors (full professors in US terms), but one is most definitely not. Yes, my concerns will be different to those of a postdoc madly job hunting, not knowing if academia is for them or not, or if it is whether they can stay in it. But also, let me tell you that depression does not go away just because everything is going right in your life.
Most importantly though, we really want to create a community, and the invitation is always open to guest post to anyone at any level of academia (or post academia). Our only terms are that posts cannot be offensive (in our judgement) and you are prepared to licence them under creative commons, allowing us to share it freely while you retain copyright. We can post for you if you send us text, or we can add you as a blog author. We will take posts under real names or pseudonyms or just anonymously.
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
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it may well be easier to be open about issues like depression when you are already safe in a tenured position
ReplyDeleteThis is an important point to make I think. I have taken a decision to be open about these issues because I think the community needs someone to take the first step with this; before Ian invited me to start this blog, I had been semi-open person-to-person for years but kept it off the internet.
On good days I'm sure enough in my own performance not to worry.
On bad days I don't think I could be an academic at all.
I look forward to reading your posts!
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