Small actions can have big impacts: Transforming Mental Health and Wellbeing Policy and Culture

Purpose Large scale cultural and societal change around mental health and wellbeing may sometimes be assumed to be contingent on top down strategy and implementation. The purpose of this session is to explore how piecemeal interventions and actions taken by a number of different actors at institutional and policy level can lead to significant and impactful changes. Design The first part of the presentation will outline key policy developments and initiatives which have emerged in the United Kingdom in recent years at the national level. These include: Exploring wellbeing and mental health and associated support services for postgraduate researchers (2018), The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers (2019), Research and Development (R&D) People and Culture Strategy (2021), culminating in a consultation on a New Deal for Postgraduate Research (2022) issued by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). UKRI is the largest single funder of postgraduate research students in the UK, with between 20-30% of the UK’s approximately 100,000 doctoral students supported directly through its research councils. The New Deal includes a commitment to promote and safeguard wellbeing and support a positive research culture. The second part of the presentation will explore some initiatives to improve postgraduate researcher wellbeing in one UK university. These initiatives included mental health first aid training for academic and professional staff and postgraduate researcher student representatives, training on mental health and wellbeing for supervisors, and development sessions for postgraduate researchers which focussed on developing health working practices. Although some of these initiatives were externally funded by the Office for Students, others built on existing proposals and interventions. They aligned with the call for researcher empowerment in the Researcher Mental Health Observatory’s Researcher Mental Health and Wellbeing Manifesto (2021), raising awareness of mental health and wellbeing amongst the postgraduate researcher community and professionalisation of supervision practices and processes. Through identifying good practice and providing an evidence base for effective interventions, this patchwork of different initiatives was drawn together into an institutional strategy for enhancing the mental health and wellbeing of postgraduate researchers. In this institutional context, this bottom up development and implementation of strategy proved to be an effective mechanism for consolidating and effecting change and gaining senior institutional buy-in.This document is part of the Book of Abstracts of the ReMO 2022 Conference that was organized within the framework of COST Action CA19117 - "Researcher Mental Health"