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Coping with COVID-19: A mental health seminar for early career academics

7 December 2021
12.00pm – 1.00pm AEDT
ONLINE
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Previous surveys conducted by UNSW ECAN clearly show that COVID-19 has led to increased teaching/service workloads, anxiety, and feelings of isolation, mental fatigue and “overwhelm” among Early Career Academics (ECAs). While a number of resources are available at UNSW, we believe ECAs have been particularly impacted by the pandemic and thus, require additional and targeted support. This event brings together experts on well-being, work-related stress and working through uncertainty and precarity.

Given that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on mental health and fundamentally changed the way academics work, what can ECAs do to improve their mental health and maintain wellbeing in this ‘new normal’, and how can UNSW support ECAs to have good mental health?   

This seminar will provide insights from an esteemed panel of experts about how to optimise wellbeing including:  

  1. Why wellbeing matters at work.
  2. What is ‘burnout’?  
  3. Support available to UNSW ECAs to improve wellbeing.
  4. Practical tips for ECAs to identify mental health issues and address them.
  5. When to raise a mental health issue with your manager, and how to do this.
  6. Workplace health and safety obligations relevant to mental health.

Panel members:

  • Liza Poppert – Wellbeing Consultant, UNSW Wellbeing
  • Michelle Steel – Head of HR Business Partnering, UNSW HR
  • Dr Samineh Sanatkar – Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Workplace Mental Health Research Program, Black Dog Institute
  • Dr Sarah Gregson – NTEU UNSW Vice President (Academic), Senior Lecturer, School of Management, UNSW Business School