ReMO - Researcher Mental Health

ReMO will focus on wellbeing and mental health within academia, a theme of strategic importance for the European Research Area. Previous research shows that low levels of wellbeing and mental health problems have a negative impact on individual, team and organizational performance, triggering significant costs. In addition, institutional context, organizational structure and culture, as well as managerial practices have significant impact on wellbeing and health of employees. Therefore, general insights on the causes of workplace wellbeing 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. ReMO wants to address these limitations using a threefold approach: (1) We aim at 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 internationalization, job insecurity, etc.); (2) We take a multilevel perspective on problems and problem generating mechanisms, but also on positive organizational behavior in support of meaningful work and wellbeing; (3) We use a diversity of methods with short feedback loops between theory and practice. The proposers of ReMO are 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 a much needed interdisciplinary (e.g. psychology, sociology, business administration), multilevel (individual, organizational, system) and intercultural perspective.