Growing concerns about the mental health of college students overshadow the fact that faculty also face similar psychological stressors, including serious mental illness. Certainly, faculty would be better equipped to promote the well-being of their students if their employers supported them in prioritizing their own mental health. But professors like me must deal with it quietly, fearing the loss of credibility that would come from disclosing the paradoxical condition of being psychiatrically “disabled.”
Before the global pandemic, ivory tower bells rang about rising rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts among students, with little attention paid to faculty. It was as if those who could earn a PhD and tenure were immune to psychological struggles, while the work required to achieve overall excellence left us so exhausted that we sacrificed our mental health for the paltry reward of academic prestige.
The pandemic made things worse for both students and faculty. When higher education went online in the spring of 2020, university leaders pleaded with faculty to make sure students didn’t fail or drop out, all the while taking our health for granted. Then enrollment dropped, and they insisted that many of us return to campus. This shows that making sure students are happy and thriving is more important than the legitimate fear of getting sick or even dying. Being treated as unnecessary lowered morale and led to rising rates of resignation among academic faculty.
As a professor, I am still in academia, but I can no longer remain silent about what it’s like to be highly educated and work in a field surrounded by people who suffer from prejudice. I was taught to hide my true self in college, when my supervisor red-inked out all references to my mental illness and inpatient treatment in an essay I wrote to secure a graduate scholarship.
In 2000, five years after receiving my PhD, my colleagues learned of my history of mental illness during a brief hospital stay and admitted me in their place. The following year, I received tenure and was eventually promoted to professor.
I have long believed myself to be more privileged than oppressed, even though I dropped out of college as an undergrad and spent 14 months in a psychiatric hospital overcoming serious mental illness. It took me 30 years to finally recognise that I was part of a protected class, when my boss became enraged and publicly accused me of having mental health “issues”.
I was shocked and disheartened, but I decided not to dwell on it. Instead, I stood up for myself and began researching successful working adults who had been diagnosed with a mental illness. Since then, I have interviewed over 50 people, including university faculty from across the United States in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Like me, they have persevered and been successful professionally while personally struggling with diagnoses such as borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, and social anxiety disorder.
Prominent professors with impressive publication records and federal research funding portfolios told me how they were mistreated when their careers were interrupted by mental illness. Emily is one example. (In this article, we always use pseudonyms when sharing the stories of interviewees.) She once took a leave of absence to recover from depression and suicidal thoughts, only to find that her administrative position had been terminated while she was away. Convinced that her colleagues were waging a “campaign to undermine her,” Emily complained to her university’s human resources representative, who advised her that “some battles are better not to fight.” She gave up, went on a job hunt, and secured a tenured position at a more prestigious university.
Bruce, a physician and medical academic, went on sick leave to be treated for psychotic depression. When he returned to work, his employer required a letter from a psychiatrist to confirm that Bruce was fit to practice, which he found “really humiliating.” Years later, once Bruce’s clinical skills and academic record were established, he began to speak publicly about his experiences. Even then, one colleague told Bruce to his face that “we wouldn’t have hired you” if he had known about his diagnosis.
Incidents of discrimination against university faculty due to mental illness occurred before the pandemic, which caused widespread loneliness in society as a macro-level stressor. The impact of social isolation on mental health was well known as many people have experienced it, but the ongoing risk of COVID-19 infection is even greater.
One day, during a department chair brainstorming session led by the dean, I jokingly asked whether pandemic-induced social anxiety qualified as a reason for remote work adjustment. My comment was out of context in a conversation about weakened immune systems, and everyone erupted in laughter. Perhaps I had touched a nerve. In retrospect, it was no laughing matter.
A few months later, after recovering from COVID-19, I was overcome with anxiety and went to my dean in tears, begging to be relieved of my administrative responsibilities so I could get healthy again. The time off worked wonders, allowing me to decompress, gather my energy, and launch my project, Borderpolars, about people with the seemingly unlikely dual diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder.
My research shows that people who meet the criteria for both disorders tend to be economically and socially disadvantaged, have terrible histories of childhood abuse and traumatic experiences in adulthood, and yet some manage to reach the upper echelons of higher education.
In 2023, I interviewed Jane, a self-described border poler who, like me, had been a professor and department chair during the pandemic. As middle managers, we were caught between administrators who set the policies that must be enforced and the faculty and students who would experience the consequences.
Unlike me, Jane had never received intensive inpatient treatment, and the pandemic was too much for her to bear. When her school resumed in-person classes, there was so much “friction and conflict” that Jane realized she couldn’t take it anymore and took family and medical leave. Determined to find the help she needed herself, Jane looked for a facility far from her school.
The therapy helped a lot and Jane felt blessed to have “excellent” care she received from caring professionals who helped her deal with a lifelong traumatic experience. The focused time “reset” her, but did not restore her readiness to re-enter higher education.
Instead, Jane realized that academia would not provide her with “a life worth living.” “Academia is just draining!” she cried. “I was great at research, I was great at service, but I was just working,” she continued. Leaving her tenured professorship, Jane became “more careful about offering unpaid work” and took a job where she “only had to work 40 hours.”
As I heard the relief in Jane’s voice, I worried about the cost of excelling academically and the constant feeling that no matter what I accomplished, it would never be enough. I realized I had internalized the stigma against mental illness, downplayed my own achievements, and was too concerned about being great in the eyes of others and not enough about simply being healthy.
These mindsets are hard to break, especially when higher education is doing little to address them. The university system still serves the stereotypical straight white male whose mental health is supposedly perfect and whose wife fulfills his every need outside of school. But faculty are increasingly diverse, with complex needs both on and off the job.
Higher education suffers when exemplary faculty like Jane become exhausted and resentful and feel they have no choice but to leave the ivory tower, and it benefits at our expense when faculty like Bruce, Emily, and me stay and silently bear the hidden hurt of imposed and internalized stigma.
Rather than taking our well-being for granted, higher education leaders should consider calls for cultural and organizational change in academia to support the well-being of all, including faculty and staff with serious mental illnesses. For example, the Okanagan Charter, an international framework for promoting well-being in higher education, calls on universities to “embed well-being into all aspects of campus culture” and to “lead health promotion activities and collaborations locally and globally.” Additionally, the Well-Being in Higher Education Network, a coalition of universities and organizations around the world, promotes the integration of inner well-being and social change education.
University and college leaders need to do more in these directions, for the benefit of all who study and work at their institutions and, ultimately, for the betterment of the institutions themselves. When faculty feel safe to speak freely and honestly about their psychological vulnerabilities, students will see in them a positive hope that they too can reach their full potential. Then, together, we can become wholesome people in higher education.
