Feedback from ReMO COST Action to European Commission Initiative: "A comprehensive approach to mental health"
Creators: name: Kismihók, Gábor
name: Cahill, Brian
name: Gauttier, Stéphanie
name: Metcalfe, Janet
name: Mol, Stefan T.
name: McCashin, Darragh
name: Gökalp, Gökçe
name: Güneş, Murat
name: Schroijen, Mathias
name: Dan, Maria Bostenaru
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023

description: The ReMO COST Action is a network of stakeholders from all levels of the research community and from over 40 countries. ReMO calls for leadership at the EU level to make researcher mental health and well-being a priority in its research and innovation policies, for instance, by placing researcher mental health more prominently on the agenda of the redrafting of the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. ReMO has drafted a Researcher Mental Health and Well-being Manifesto that calls for the assessment of how the mental health and well-being of researchers can best be nourished and sustained through actions and initiatives at the policy, institutional, community and individual levels. The Manifesto calls on all stakeholders in the research ecosystem to engage in developing policies that monitor, improve, and sustain well-being and mental health in the research environment, delineating more encompassing metrics of success and quality, supporting work-life balance, inclusiveness, and family-friendly sustainable research careers. Research shows that low levels of well-being and mental health problems in research workplaces have a negative impact on individual, team, and organisational performance, triggering significant material and immaterial costs. In addition, institutional context, organisational structure and culture, as well as managerial practices have significant impact on the well-being and health of employees. Therefore, general insights into the causes of workplace well-being and mental health need to be refined with contextual specifics (i.e. in academia) in order to develop tailored, effective, and efficient prevention and action programs. The ReMO COST Action on Researcher Mental Health addresses these limitations using a threefold approach: We are developing a conceptual framework and tools that are tailored to the academic context taking into account the specifics and challenges of academia and academic work (e.g. performance management of academics, an increasingly competitive landscape for recruiting and retaining talented employees, increasing challenges of dealing with diversity and internationalisation, job insecurity, etc.); We take a multilevel perspective on problems and problem generating mechanisms, but also on positive organisational behaviour in support of meaningful work and well-being; We use a diversity of methods with short feedback loops between theory and practice. ReMO participants include academics, practitioners, policy-makers and consultants for higher education institutions. They represent an international mix of scientific knowledge and practice on researcher mental health and much needed interdisciplinary (e.g. psychology, sociology, business administration), multilevel (individual, organisational, system) and intercultural perspectives. The launch event of the Researcher Mental Health and Well-being Manifesto was set up as a meeting held within the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe. We attach the pdf version of the Researcher Mental Health and Well-being Manifesto, which is available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5788557 ReMO is supported by the COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), a funding agency for research and innovation networks, whose Actions help connect research
description: This Feedback was submitted to the European Commission Initiative on "A comprehensive approach to mental health". It can be viewed on the European Commission website at: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/13676-A-comprehensive-approach-to-mental-health/F3382135_en This work was performed within the framework of COST Action CA19117 - "Researcher Mental Health".
description: {"references": ["G\u00e1bor Kismih\u00f3k, Brian Cahill, St\u00e9phanie Gauttier, Janet Metcalfe, Stefan T. Mol, Darragh McCashin, Jana Lasser, Murat G\u00fcne\u015f, Mathias Schroijen, Martin Grund, Katia Levecque, Susan Guthrie, Katarzyna Wac, Jesper Dahlgaard, Mohamad Nadim Adi, &amp; Christina Kling. (2021). Researcher Mental Health and Well-being Manifesto. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5788557"]}