Podcasts

Podcast – Student Health and Wellbeing

Hosted by Oz Ismail

Reading Time: 25 minutes

Research, the discovery of new knowledge, has been described as an endless frontier. There will certainly be instances during a PhD and beyond when curiosity driven activity can indeed seem vast and relentless.

It is critical that researchers at whatever stage in their career develop the capacity and capability to generate an appropriate perspective on what they are facing. Put simply, and starkly, doing research depends on being well.

As such, an awareness on health and wellbeing is central, and getting the right support is key.

In this podcast Oz Ismail from UCL is joined by Géraldine Garrabet a Student Support and Welfare Officer, from the School of Physics & Astronomy at University of Manchester, Dr Caroline Selai a Senior Lecturer from the UCL Institute of Neurology and finally Kellie Morrissey a Research Fellow working at the Open Lab in Newcastle University.


Click here to read a full transcript of this podcast

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Dementia Researcher Podcast, brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, a network for early career researchers.

Ozama Ismail:

Hello, my name is Ozama Ismail and I am a PhD researcher based at University College London, and today I’m hosting this podcast recording for the NIHR Dementia Researcher website. This week I have a fantastic panel in the studio to talk on the topic of student health and wellbeing. I’m joined by Geraldine Garrabet, a Student Support and Welfare Officer from the University of Manchester, Dr Caroline Selai, a Senior Lecturer from the UCL Institute of Neurology, and Dr Kellie Morrissey, a Research Fellow working at the Open Lab in Newcastle University.

Ozama Ismail:

So research, the discovery of new knowledge, has been described as an endless frontier. There will certainly be instances during a PhD and beyond when this curiosity driven activity can seem vast and relentless. So it’s really critical that researchers, at whatever stage in their career, develop the capacity and the capability to generate an appropriate perspective on what they’re facing. Put simply and starkly, doing research depends on being well.

Ozama Ismail:

To start this conversation, perhaps we could just go around and if you could introduce yourselves and tell me a little bit about your research, or your work, and your involvement in providing support in research to early career people. Let’s start with you Kellie.

Kellie Morrisey:

So as you said, Ozama, I am a Research Fellow in Open Lab, which is a HCI group in the School of Computing Science in Newcastle University. My own background is as a psychologist and my PhD was in ethnography of dementia care, that was carried out in Ireland a few years ago. And right now I suppose I head up the Digital Social Care group in Newcastle University, but I also have several students who work day-to-day with people with dementia and their carers. Primarily they come from interdisciplinary areas, often computer science, and I’ve seen them face some struggles and some issues, so I think there’s my kind of in or interest in exploring how these students cultivate a new sensitivity to working in this area.

Dr Caroline Selai:

Hello. My name’s Dr. Caroline Selai from UCL Institute of Neurology and my own work, as a Senior Lecturer and academic, I’m a psychologist and I’ve been looking, for a number of years, at sort of psychological aspects of neurological disorders, a whole range, from Alzheimer’s through to movement disorders and epilepsy, et cetera. And for a long time now I’ve had an interest, perhaps as a psychologist, I was drawn to the student wellbeing roles at UCL Institute of Neurology and in broader, wider parts of UCL in general, and I’ve had a number of roles there as a Departmental Tutor. I’m currently a Co-Director of three different MSC programs, and I’m also currently Co-Director of UCL Cultural Consultation Service.

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

I’m Geraldine Garrabet. I’m the Student Support and Welfare Officer at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. I usually say to people, I look after students with problems. When they have an issue, they come and see me, I’m the first port of call, usually, for students, whether they’re undergrads or postgrads, we cover the whole thing. And I provide advice, guidance, and support for the students within the school and I’m also their Disability Coordinator. So all the students with a disability come to me and I put in place a support plan for them with the help of the disability office. I offer a lot of pastoral support and usually it’s non-academic guidance I offer, they’ve got to go to their personal tutors for academic guidance. I also sit on a few committees and boards, Mitigating Circumstances Committee, Exam Boards, Equality and Diversity, et cetera.

Ozama Ismail:

Great. So we’ve definitely got a very experienced panel in the house today. Since this is such a vast subject, right, wellbeing and student welfare. It could come from so many different places, there are academic issues, there’s people’s personal issues, sometimes it’s culture and religion. We could break it down to so many different areas. So to start with, could you perhaps talk a little bit about what the most common issues that people come to you with when they are starting to struggle?

Kellie Morrisey:

Yeah. So I suppose I’m talking primarily in a kind of a dementia research role here, but I can tell you there’s definitely some commonalities across the issues that students come to me with. And they typically are about ethics, I suppose, and kind of everyday ethics. So they’re faced with field research, working with people who are living with challenging circumstances and serious vulnerabilities. They haven’t necessarily come up through a more social science or psychology background, so very often it’s about cultivating kind of an everyday ethics. So, I have students who are working in care homes and care centres and they’re learning, coming from very technical subdomain, so computer science, they’re learning completely new ways of working with people who have these conditions.

Kellie Morrisey:

And in very many instances, as we all know, I suppose, almost all of us have been touched by issues of dementia and in our daily lives and these students aren’t exempt from that. And very often they’re dealing with their research bringing up kind of familial circumstances and familial histories that maybe a different research route wouldn’t have taken. So I think the subject of many students’ research topics day-to-day now are quite difficult and complex.

Dr Caroline Selai:

Yeah, so I suppose I could talk for hours about this topic really, but one way that might be of interest to listeners is to think in terms of the life cycle of a student, in a way. So typically they would come for a one year MSC program, postgraduate students at the Institute of Neurology, or thinking about students on typical three-year PhD, for example. So it’s very interesting to track their experience over time. And I suppose the perhaps interesting crunch point, as you might expect, is when you initially arrive at the university, arrive at UCL, this very elite Russell Group University. It could be from another country, another part of the world, another part of the world where there’s the sea and gentle landscapes and you arrive in the middle of a huge city, for example. [crosstalk 00:07:13].

Dr Caroline Selai:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, [crosstalk 00:07:17], and our students from Nigeria, I’ve got lots of funny anecdotes about that, we had a tube strike once and a chap said that everyone came out of the tube looking on a map thinking, “Oh my goodness, there’s no buses or tubes,” or try and look on a map. But this student from Nigeria said that, “Back home I would always look up to the sun to try and navigate,” and guess what? In the UK, you can never see the sun. Anyway, so there’s lots and lots of stories, but I think, just to bear in mind, all of our students, whether they come from Manchester or wherever, or even another part of London as undergrads, that initial crunch, that sort of panic, that settling in. And obviously, as you can imagine, international students have got that plus and there’s just tons of things. It’s about being away from home, it’s about how do you share a flat or rooms with somebody, it’s a whole lot of things.

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

For me, obviously it’s going to be more specific what the students come to see me mainly with mental health issues. I do feel that there’s a massive difference. When I started the job about nine years ago, the main disability that students were registered with were learning difficulties, so dyslexia, dyspraxia. And now it’s, I mean by far, mental health issues like depression, anxiety, bipolar, are way, way … They’re at the top now of the list. So when they come to see me, it’s a lot of problems to do with anxiety, insomnia, depression and everything that that might bring.

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

You were talking about new students, they come from a family maybe that have mollycoddled them, anyway, and then they come to a big city like Manchester or London and they discover life. They’ve got to fend for themselves, but some of them just go into it head first and they discover drinking, drugs, going out, you know. And so you’ve got to pick up the pieces of all those things. And also, more and more, because they’ve got all the parents, they come to university and their parents start being sick. So they’ve got to deal with the family problems that that entail, as well. So they’ve got to look after their little brother, their dad, their mom, you know.

Ozama Ismail:

So it sounds like there’s quite a wide range that you deal with on a day-to-day basis within your roles. I just want to pick up on a few specifics from off the back of what you’ve said. So like you said, Caroline, coming to a big university, in a big city, especially when you enter in a postgraduate program, you feel like you’ve worked to get there and it’s a huge responsibility on you. So the sense of, “I am going to fail,” is always pushed to the back of your mind because you feel like you have to make it.

Ozama Ismail:

And, personally, my experience of being a PhD student is that sense grows and grows and grows as you go through the years, right? And because the way academia is, we are scared to admit that we’re going to fail because it’s just the way it’s structured, right? We want to succeed, we want to publish that paper, we want to get those next results. So would you say that students, or early career researchers, are becoming more open to admitting when they are struggling? Or do you think that that is still something that is not spoken about enough? This sense of, “I’m about to fail,” and the sense of crushing doom that we don’t want to admit is always there.

Dr Caroline Selai:

Well it’s quite difficult to answer your question. I think it’s a mixture, interestingly. So one group, for example, are students who’ve done incredibly well as undergraduates, perhaps, or in the [inaudible 00:11:22], and they come to university and get their first bit of feedback and guess what? Instead of getting 80%, as they always do, suddenly the mark is 40% and that can be a bit of a blow to someone’s self-confidence. So that could be one sort of a reality check, if you like.

Dr Caroline Selai:

But there are other groups, for example, our international students is a big challenge and we’ve all been thinking about them a lot because there, there may be sort of stigma around seeking help. And even though we reach out and we’ve got hundreds of opportunities and signposting and labelling to ask for help, whatever that is, is already a huge challenge for some students. And then if you add on possible [inaudible 00:12:05] mental health difficulties when back home there’s a huge stigma still. I think we’re quite, sort of, proud in the UK, almost, to say, “One in four of us has a mental health problem.” But let me tell you, there’s lots of parts of the world where you would not want to own up to that.

Ozama Ismail:

Right. And also, given big cities, like for example Manchester or London where you do have students coming from all over the world, where perhaps mental health, especially, is stigmatized. Sometimes even certain physical conditions are stigmatized. For example, I originate from Sri Lanka, and parts of Sri Lanka people don’t even want to speak about dementia because they feel a certain shame about it. So it can be quite hard. And so specifically whilst in the UK we might speak a lot about mental health, it’s an interesting point that that doesn’t represent what everybody’s feeling and there’s still a large number of students, early care researchers, probably don’t want to admit these cultural barriers that they face because they just want to get on with it. Would you agree with that?

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

Definitely. Yeah. I mean, we’re trying to be more visible to postgrad students at Manchester and we are, in the School of Physics and Astronomy, we’ve started a focus group with the PhD students to try and find ways to help them. Because, like you said, they’re very much keeping themselves to themselves, they’re just keeping their heads down, you know, work, work, work and they find it extremely difficult to reach out. So we are more visible, the student support team, and we are giving them the opportunity to talk to us about what would help them, et cetera. So now we are organizing little coffee mornings where we can talk about, you know, how difficult it is for them, what’s difficult [inaudible 00:00:13:58], and tutors, advisors, academics are coming along as well. So they can talk to us, the student support team, but also academics and make it a big space for them to air their issues. So that’s one of the things we do anyway.

Ozama Ismail:

So Kellie, can I just ask you, in terms of the type of work that is involved in dementia research, specifically … So my project, I deal with tubes and slides and very stereotypical lab stuff, right? I’m shamefully going to admit that I fit that image. But there are lots of people working in dementia research who have to face the reality of it and it’s very heavy when you’re dealing with real people, patients, families. Do you think we talk enough about the impact that has on the researcher and what is the impact that has on the researcher?

Kellie Morrisey:

I don’t think we do. I think carrying out my own PhD, I felt just this deep gulf where everyday kind of issues weren’t talked about and I couldn’t find that forum where people were talking about it. You can go to your supervisor, to a certain extent, but they can’t solve everything for you. In terms of the problems and the … I mean they’re not problems, they’re more complexities that I see my students facing. Yeah, it is. It is students who are trained in other specialties going to do, in the School of Computing Science, design work with people with dementia and their carers in these really participatory ways and learning whole new ways to communicate.

Kellie Morrisey:

I have a student at the moment who does have a family history of dementia and one of his first field sessions in the last few weeks he just said, “I had a bit of a cry.” And I remember from my own PhD doing this field research, doing a few areas in the care setting, coming back and feeling exhausted, just really, really tired and needing to kind of figure out a whole way of working around that. And I think it kind of ties into what the others are saying, in terms of kind of a broader acknowledgement of mental health and different needs and creating kind of flexible workplaces. I don’t know what the answer is. I do know that we can talk a bit more about it.

Ozama Ismail:

Do you have any advice on that? On how people can deal with that kind of exhaustion, which is not just physical, but mental as well?

Dr Caroline Selai:

Yeah, I would definitely think that we should be thinking in terms of sort of buddy groups or sort of debriefing groups or whatever. I mean very many years ago, part of my research, my PhD, was actually working with young onset dementia patients. And there, I remember every time I went to the home, the family wanted to bring out all the family photo albums to demonstrate how, “Wonderful my husband was when he was a sportsman,” or, “My wife was when she was a ballroom dancer.” And that is very emotionally draining. They want you to be a witness, you’re doing far beyond your little sort of research interview.

Dr Caroline Selai:

And I would take a tip from sort of psychology training, psychotherapy training, you would always have an opportunity to sort of debrief and I would very much urge students to find someone. It may not be your official supervisor, but you could sort of buddy up with a group, a peer group, that you would develop.

Ozama Ismail:

So Geraldine, can I ask you, in terms of … So you said students, when they enter programs you would probably, as the welfare officer, you would know if they had certain needs or if they had certain disabilities. But do you have any advice, or what are your thoughts, on students who, during the course of their degree, if they develop a certain illness that might not externally be visible and they, for a while, might quietly struggle. And again, I feel like it’s that PhD culture of just keep ploughing on. What’s your advice? How would you recommend students approach their seniors or their supervisors about things like that when they go wrong?

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

Okay. There’s a difference between undergrads and postgrad students. The undergrads have got ways of reaching out to us that are probably … Yes, more numerous for undergrad students than it is for postgrads. But like I said to you, we’ve established now a few rules for postgrad students to come and see us, we’ve got those focus groups, we’ve got the coffee mornings, and also we’re more visible. The student support team, which I manage, is just really, really visible now. So I do a presentation during welcome week, freshers’ week, and so they know my face, they know to come afterwards. So yeah, there are ways of getting students to come and talk to us.

Dr Caroline Selai:

I think it’s difficult because, I mean having been on both sides of the fence if you like, both a student and then later now, senior academic member of staff, it’s interesting to think that still, in all that time, there is a bit of anxiety about acknowledging a problem and it’s partly around, “Well these people are going to be writing my reference for me. What are people going to think?” And there’s still something about that. But we have put a lot of mechanisms in place, certainly at UCL, even in the local departments, it’s a whole sort of spider’s web, or whatever, of people that you can go to, networks. But there’s something about still a reluctance to do that.

Dr Caroline Selai:

I mean, my own work would be, my message, my take home message, would always be to see somebody sooner rather than later. Because obviously for all problems, an interpersonal problem or a mental health issue or even just the fact that your PhD is actually going a bit wrong and you’re falling behind schedule, obviously the longer you leave that, the worse it gets. I can’t think of a time when someone’s buried their head in the sand and guess what, it all magically got better.

Dr Caroline Selai:

So the message is, do seek help. And I think that even though we say that, that message doesn’t still get across. But that’s the answer. There is somebody there who will be able to help.

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

We’ve got more and more students asking, postgrad students, asking for interruption of studies, actually, which is something they never used to do. So the message is getting through.

Dr Caroline Selai:

Starting to get out. Yeah, yeah.

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

You know, it can be three months, six months, a year, but they’ve got that opportunity to stop.

Dr Caroline Selai:

Yes, to stop the clock.

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

Get better or sort the problem out and then come back and resume their studies.

Kellie Morrisey:

Something that I keep seeing from some academics, I think primarily on Twitter now, but, which I wish we all did, was kind of celebrating your failures as well as your wins. So this idea of having a wall of failure, so however many rejected grants submissions you have, rejected papers, and kind of highlighting that reality. So we really target one publication venue and when you don’t get in it almost feels like, “Oh my gosh, I really failed.” And you haven’t, really.

Ozama Ismail:

And it’s interesting because by doing that, you’re highlighting the fact that you tried to do that thing. Because it’s so easy to forget, when you start to get those rejections, that you tried so hard and in trying itself, you’re working and you’re getting that much closer to that goal. You just forget that because you were just so focused on trying to get it to the next place to get it published, right?

Kellie Morrisey:

Yeah and thinking that it’s never work wasted. It will go somewhere else, it will go in your thesis. Not every venue is right for everything. And yeah, I think we should have a wall filled with all our mess ups.

Ozama Ismail:

I’m all for that. So, it’s interesting that you say that more and more students are seeking help and are taking interruptions. What do you think, say the rest of the people in the group, for example, is there other things we can look out for? Are there ways we can support each other? Like do you have any advice to help other people or look out for signs that things might be going wrong for somebody?

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

Usually, we look out for signs that their attitude is changing, their behaviour, the way they look, the way they speak, if some of their friends haven’t seen them for a while. The students union have got great campaigns they run every year as well. You know, “Look after your mate,” and stuff like that. So you can come and tell someone within your school if you’re worried about your friend, if you’ve not seen them for a while, if they’ve not been coming to lectures, or whatever. And then we just call them in and then if they don’t come, sometimes we’ve got to call security to check on them. But there are ways of checking on people, whether you’re an academic student or a staff member.

Ozama Ismail:

So in terms of sort of healthy living, that’s something I would 100% admit got bad for me when I started my PhD, because the science almost takes priority and then the amount of work that comes off the back of that starts to take priority. And then last year I made a conscious effort to say to myself, “No, I’m going to have a gym schedule. I’m going to do certain things for my own wellbeing.” What’s your experience with that? Do we need a culture change or are people reluctant to kind of do that?

Dr Caroline Selai:

Well I, a couple of years ago, started, in our induction week, which I’ve been thinking about actually as we’re preparing for induction coming up, and I started to think of the sort of model, if you like, of coaching with our students. And I flag that up in induction week and I would personally think now, especially with … Even our master’s students are all following an individualized program, let alone our PhD students. So really encouraging them to think sort of holistically over the year or over the three years like, “What are my goals?” And it really is almost like a sort of coaching. But part of that, just very briefly, students that have got into difficulties, when I was departmental graduate tutor, that was my role to sort of find out what was going on. One of the things often is time management and I think that’s a big important point when you are particularly a PhD student, you’re trying to plan over three years or more and it’s very often students have got into difficulty.

Dr Caroline Selai:

But importantly I did start to say to students to actually put into their Gantt chart, their timelines, things like going to the gym or going on holiday because I realized that they hadn’t factored those in. So you actually have to explicitly say, “Yes, I’m going to have some time out, regular holidays, breaks, whatever. I’m going to go to the gym, to the cinema.” But of course that’s got to feature in your time plan because if it’s not there, it’s not going to happen. So I started to say, “You need that visual representation, write it down, have a Gantt chart, have it all in.”

Ozama Ismail:

That’s an interesting point because, for example, going on holiday can be like a very guilt inducing feeling when you’re in the middle of a big research project, right? How can we help that situation? Or do you think we can change supervisor’s approach to how students manage their work, perhaps?

Kellie Morrisey:

Okay, sorry, I just want to really quickly say that I had a student recently who passed her [inaudible 00:25:55] with flying colours, but the one recommendation that we made was go on holiday. Yeah, I feel like we should absolutely make that time. Gosh, you don’t want to make it that they have to do it, but maybe we should. They should have to take-

Ozama Ismail:

Compulsory holiday.

Kellie Morrisey:

Exactly. Let’s shake you off.

Dr Caroline Selai:

Yeah, but I think sometimes it’s also about asking the student to think a little bit about themselves. I know that might sound a bit sort of corny, thinking about their sort of strengths and weaknesses, and maybe negotiating a holiday break is a skill that they should be brushing up, that should be a goal that they should be working on. Maybe they need to go to assertiveness training in the extreme, you know? So I think that’s as much something to think about as anything else.

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

I heard about PhD student who would make herself take seven days holiday every three months. And she just had it in a schedule, basically, and every three months she would go away, whether to see her parents or to go abroad or to see friends, whatever. But seven days, every three months incorporated into the …

Dr Caroline Selai:

I mean, you have to realize that the work is going to stop and when you go out into the real world and get a job, whatever, it’s going to be relentless. So you, and only you, can decide, “I’m going to have a break.” Because the world isn’t going to stop and tell you, no one’s going to knock on your door and say, “Hello, Caroline. Would you like a holiday?” That isn’t how it works. So you have to be proactive and decide.

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

And a holiday’s better than an interruption.

Dr Caroline Selai:

Well, yes.

Kellie Morrisey:

There’s something I think we should pay attention to too, is that often research and PhD students aren’t paid a whole lot. So you should think about the impact on, how much is a gym membership, how much is-

Ozama Ismail:

That’s right. Yeah.

Kellie Morrisey:

So I guess that’s always, again, because my PhD was relatively recent, remembering budgeting for Tesco. Thinking about that impact as well. And I mean, I’m not totally sure there’s anything that we as a panel can do about it, but definitely acknowledging that gosh, they may not be able to take the holiday of their dreams, but encouraging to take time for themselves is important.

Ozama Ismail:

That’s definitely a very good point. So to just round off our discussion, do you have any top tips that you can give our listeners, say, no matter what stage in their career they are, how they can look after themselves a little bit more and have good health and keep their minds healthy as well through their research careers? What top tips have you got?

Miss Geraldine Garrabet:

I usually tell my students to try a bit of mindfulness. There are applications they can download on their phones. So, I talk about mindfulness, meditation, attend some workshops that the counselling service offer as well to students. Sports, there are a lot of societies they can access as well, outside activities, and then sleep. Sleep seems to be something they forget about quite a lot. And then varied and balanced diet. Volunteering as well. I find that a lot of students, especially the ones who are depressed or anxious, that helps them a lot to do some volunteering around the university or outside the university. And also we’ve got a wellbeing week, which is a week of all free activities for students, yoga, squash, badminton, whatever. So that’s quite popular as well.

Dr Caroline Selai:

I suppose I’ve got probably quite a few things, but just off the top of my head, since you’ve asked. Thinking about it, I think one thing that I would encourage all students to do, I mean particularly at UCL, Global University, is just look around your new peer group when you join a program or even as a PhD student in the department. You’ve probably got students from as many countries and cultural backgrounds as there are students, sometimes. And I would just give that little bit of thought, that’s a fantastic opportunity to reach out, to learn something about India or China where you’ve perhaps never been. And in so doing, forge some bonds and some nourishing sort of networks, which will help everybody, I think, in different ways. And there’s all sorts of things you can do, like arrange a meal where everybody brings in, to a picnic, something from their cultural background, a dish that they particularly like, you know? So there’s all sorts of quite cheap things that you can do.

Dr Caroline Selai:

And the other thing that I’ve started to think about, and again, I suppose this is my background as a psychologist, interested in brief interventions, but that’s already when you’ve got to a sort of clinical level of depression, anxiety. What is really of interest to me, is thinking at that preclinical level, what can we do before someone’s difficulties become something that they need to go to the psychologist or the counsellor about? And there are all sorts of things online, there’s sorts of things that we’re trying to develop. So if you think about it, somebody who gets their bit of feedback, as we were saying earlier, starts to doubt themselves, start to lose self-confidence, you can imagine that that is just the very first step, which could spiral off and a year down the line, they would need to go to student psychological services. But if you are able to do something then, just at that very early point, where they were just feeling a little bit, you know, confidence a little bit knocked, just need a little bit of a boost, there may have been something tiny that you could do.

Dr Caroline Selai:

So I’m trying to think of ingenious ways that we can all kind of reach out and be thinking of these things. The sorts of things you would do with your therapist, cognitive behaviour therapy, informed techniques, but why wait till you’re clinically depressed? Let’s now start thinking about those. Just because I got a bit of negative feedback, does not mean that I’m hopeless and I’m going to fail everything and not get my award. But that sort of thinking, that catastrophizing is, for example, something. So could we nip that in the bud, for example, and just sort of row back a little bit and get more of a balanced perspective?

Kellie Morrisey:

For me, two things I guess really quickly. One, again, talking from an interdisciplinary point of view, be on the lookout for training that will help you upskill in areas that you’re not super comfortable in. Primarily if these are areas like professional skills, ethics, research methods, again, I’m talking about my computer science students coming in, that will give you that little bit more comfort. And I suppose be proactive in seeking those out, there are some terrible [inaudible 00:32:41] skills modules out there, but there are also really good ones that help you to broaden your skillset, your horizon.

Kellie Morrisey:

And again, just absolutely to echo what Caroline said, be looking at that network, try to dig in deep to that network, whether it’s kind of globally or locally. And I guess something I’ve seen some students trip up in, which I think is hard to extricate yourself from sometimes, is there’s kind of a point between venting and this kind of sense of negativity and there’s a point where that can spill over. So I think to ensure that you are having positive activities and interactions with that network, as well as those kinds of venting moments. Those would be the two things I think I’d look out for.

Ozama Ismail:

Brilliant. So what I’ve learned from this discussion today is make lots of friends, vent, [crosstalk 00:33:31] vent away, get lots of sleep, eat well, mindfulness. This is such good advice for me that I need to write down and take home with me. So it’s been really great talking to all of you today, but it’s time to end today’s recording. I’d really like to thank our panellists, Geraldine, Kellie, and Caroline. You can visit our website to look at the profiles of all our panellists and please do post your questions in our comments section or drop us a line on Twitter using #ECRDementia. We also suggest you take a look at the essential tools part of our website where we have a section on health and wellbeing. Please remember to subscribe to this podcast through SoundCloud and iTunes and tell all your friends and colleagues.

Voice Over:

This was a podcast brought to you by Dementia Researcher, everything you need in one place. Register today at dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.

END


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