A mental health research crisis in Australia

To the Editor

I am tired.

We are all tired.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dragged on far longer than most of us would have ever expected, and we are exhausted. The mental health impacts of the pandemic have been widely reported, and those of us working in mental health are not immune to these. For those of us living in Melbourne, and holding the unenviable title of the world’s most locked down city, things have been particularly difficult. While government restrictions and lockdowns were undeniably necessary to curb the spread of the virus, they have had significant impacts on our mental health. In addition to navigating their own mental health during the pandemic, clinicians and other mental health workers have continued to provide mental health support during a time of excessive demand for their services. Mental health researchers, however, have had to deal with an increasingly fragile and uncertain research environment.

The closure of Australia’s international borders in response to the pandemic, and consequent loss of international students which provide a significant source of income to universities, has resulted in significant financial pressures, resulting in universities slashing funds for research activities. Philanthropic organisations have had their own financial struggles throughout the pandemic, resulting in a reduction or cessation of funding opportunities. While there have been significant financial impacts on our research for those of us fortunate enough to still be employed, large-scale redundancies have seen tens of thousands of academic and support staff at universities across Australia lose their jobs over the course of the pandemic. While job security as a researcher is precarious at the best of times, it feels particularly uncertain now.

For those of us continuing in research, we face further uncertainties. For those of us in Melbourne who conduct face-to-face research in severe mental illnesses in particular, research productivity has been severely impacted. At many universities, face-to-face research almost entirely ceased over 2020–2021. While many of us moved as much as possible to an online format, much of our research has been put on hold as it is impossible to do virtually (e.g. brain imaging, eye tracking, blood analyses). This will inevitably have an impact on career progressions, particularly for early career researchers, and puts researchers who rely on face-to-face data collection at a significant disadvantage to other mental health researchers. How future funding opportunities will take these circumstances into consideration is still unclear, providing further uncertainty in an uncertain climate.

While we are currently responding to a mental health crisis in Australia, there is a clear need to respond to the ongoing crisis in mental health research.