Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, PhD, is a professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa and the Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions. She is a 2016 inductee to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

You are leading a national study examining mental health across several professions. What results can you share about academia?

Our Healthy Professional Worker Partnership team is examining mental health, leaves of absence and return to work across several professions. Our focus was capturing a picture of the pathway between experiences of mental health, leaves of absence and return to work. In early 2021, we included the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in our investigation.

The most common concerns were anxiety and low-grade depression. Academics experience distress because of high workload and continuous peer evaluation. The high workload is not just about delivering more courses. It is about having more students in the classroom, needing more and more specific preparation.

Another source of anxiety is what we clustered together as digital stress. This includes preparing and delivering online courses and high email volumes. Academics are also encouraged to conduct partnered research. This requires significant, complex and sustained engagement with community members and practitioners.

Despite these challenges, academics are less likely to take a leave of absence than other professions. Some mental health issues stay hidden because academic staff have some autonomy and discretion in structuring their work to accommodate their own needs. We talked to people about how they used their sabbatical for a mental health leave instead of doing research, which is how it is supposed to be used.

When faculty do take a leave, they are much more likely to return to work. They are also more likely to take a leave of absence if they are in a permanent position where this benefit is available to them.

So, job security is a significant mental health factor?

Absolutely. Contract academic staff often can’t take a leave and when they do, they do not have the same support to return to work as academic staff in permanent positions. Ninety-six per cent of academic staff in permanent positions are likely to return to work after taking a leave of absence. Contract academic staff are 60 per cent likely to return to work.

Several study participants said they should have taken a leave of absence. They did not because they worried about the stigma and the impact on their careers.

It is challenging to request a leave of absence for mental health reasons within an academic unit because there are privacy concerns.

There are also concerns about the added work colleagues may take to keep the academic environment going. Precarity and intersecting factors like gendered and racialized identities also complicate matters. Academic workplaces need to have more opportunities for accommodations and this often requires more staff.

You and other researchers have said there is a gender gap in academic staff mental health research. How so?

Academia was created as a middle- and upper-class white male profession in the 19th and early 20th centuries and it is still structured as when different gender and social roles existed. As women and racialized people entered the profession, they had to fit into structures that were not made to suit them. For example, universities used to have a secretarial pool to support academics. This gendered female pool of labour has slowly disappeared while more women moved into academia.

Academic staff are under even more pressure now. They have a heavy teaching load while doing committee work and must keep producing research and publications. University administrations encourage us to help international students navigate an unfamiliar environment. Indigenous and academic staff of colour also face a minority tax of added responsibilities bestowed upon them for Indigenizing and anti-racism initiatives. All these layers of work need dedicated time and support.

So, gender does matter but is about more than gender identity. It is about the gendered nature of work and gender roles at work and home and how that intersects with other identities.

COVID-19 sparked a reckoning with mental health. How did the pandemic affect academic staff?

Our 2021 national study gathered rich information in the post-secondary, secondary and primary education contexts. In 2024, we undertook a follow-up survey of about 800 volunteer participants across all professions. Overall, there were lower levels of distress, but burnout levels were persistently high. More took leaves of absence in the three years than previously. In most cases, women are more likely to take a leave of absence.

There is a broad malaise of burnout in the academic workplace, but people continue to show up to teach. We want to move on because we are in a post-pandemic world. However, the pandemic worsened some pre-pandemic trends, and we need to pay attention to the longstanding and ongoing impacts that are inequitably experienced.

How can academic staff associations help improve mental health in the workplace?

Unions have been paying a lot of attention to equity and should continue to shine a light on the issue because inequity is a driver of poor mental health. There is a great deal of stigma in the workplace around mental health issues. It is going to take more than one wellness committee to fight it. Instead of examining a problematic work environment, the worst approach is to discount an individual’s mental health struggle as a personal issue.

Our team has gathered existing practices and developed promising ideas based on our ongoing study. We pulled all this information into several toolkits. We are happy to partner or work with unions to find the practices that resonate with the challenges they are facing in their workplaces.

Most importantly, we need universities to have sufficient and appropriate resources, including staffing, to get the work done. This is one concrete way that unions and universities can act. This will enable us to have the resources, accommodations and leaves that work for individuals, colleagues and departments.

I think it would be vital for CAUT to develop guidance about promising or leading practices for workplace mental health accommodations to share among CAUT members.