As supervisors, we know you are often called on to support PGR mental health and wellbeing. At the same time, we know you are currently working in very difficult and busy circumstances and we - at the Doctoral College - want to support you as best we can in your role as a PGR supervisor. We have therefore curated a new online guide containing useful sector information, resources and courses designed to:
* enhance your current understanding of the issues around PGR mental health and wellbeing,
* support you in your role as a PGR supervisor,
* and enable you to signpost your PGRs to a range of internal and external support services and activities.
Many of these external resources have been recently developed by the higher education sector in acknowledgement of the increasing prevalence of mental health issues amongst PGRs. Much of the work is informed by evidence-based academic peer-reviewed research (which you'll find referenced throughout the materials).
There are also a number of training courses you can do to support you in this area. These include an open access course hosted by University of Manchester, as well as our own courses for staff who provide a pastoral role or who are student facing such as personal supervisors developed by the University Mental Health and Wellbeing Team. These were released for online delivery via Canvas, but we have made these courses available for you on Canvas so you can look at them/work through them on an open and flexible basis over this current academic year.
This is the first iteration of the guide and we welcome your feedback on any aspect of it. We really hope you find it useful!
We have now developed a similar guide for PGRs. It has been widely shared and promoted with the PGR community, however, please feel free to signpost your supervisees to the resource. It can be found by clicking here.
With kind regards
Tricia Shaw, Director of The Doctoral College