crowdsourcing question

[sciatrix]

Does anyone have good articles on the topic of mental health and the ADA for an audience of working researchers? EEB specific would be great but is not required. I'll be co-leading a group discussion in my department on the topic in two weeks, and I need to send something out. Currently I'm thinking of this Meg Duffy piece on crying in science, but I'd like to touch more on what kinds of mental health supports are actively required in academia which people might or might not have realized. I would also like to find pieces to the effect of "this is why you should care about disability and mental health shit in academia, guys."

It's so hard to know how to focus this one--the ADA addition wasn't my thought to add into the topic, and it makes me want to talk neurodiversity, buuuut this is a very 101 crowd and I don't want to overshoot my audience. Signal boosting would be welcome.

Comments

[wanderingnork]

This article is focused on physical chronic illness, but a lot of the commentary the author presents rings pretty true for mental health issues as well. It's got a discussion of why disabled students are undervalued in academia, why they shouldn't be, and at the end the author provides 7 very specific suggestions as to how disabled students can be helped.

I think this was my favorite passage (and the one that indicated I should send this to you):

"If I am not funded at the level necessary to survive and continue in academia, I am removed from academia. When students are valued based on productivity alone, those that are worth less become worthless."

I wish I had a great essay to pass on over, but here are some breadcrumbs

[jesse_the_k]

https://phdisabled.wordpress.com hasn't updated in a while, but there are some great pieces there

AHEAD is the professional org for university access coordinators; they have a SIG on mental health accomms:
https://www.ahead.org/about-ahead/about-overview/special-interest-groups/mental-health-disability

NATIONAL MENTAL HEALTH CONSUMERS' SELF-HELP CLEARINGHOUSE
https://www.mhselfhelp.org/search?q=accommodation

Job Accommodation Network (JAN) has a deep searchable database
https://askjan.org

[siderea]

Okay, this is orthogonal, but like a supporting cross-brace. Have you read my thing on "Somebody has told me – or I have otherwise learned about someone – that they have a mental illness. What does that tell me? What can I understand that to mean?"

[siderea]

Okay, so, also orthogonal from another direction: Why HR should handle these things, and not management. (tl;dr: because it's almost impossible for laypeople to have a discussion about accommodations with someone needing them for psychiatric reasons, and not wind up asking illegal, inappropriate, invasive questions.)

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Laziness Does Not Exist was my first thought. It' a medium piece from a college professor talking about being accommodating of neurodivergence/other life circumstances that would contribute to a student not thriving in the classroom. It might take a little bit of effort to extend that into a professional context, but the piece itself should be pretty digestible to 101 folks.