دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی بازسازی هویت من: خودمردم نگاری اکتشافی در مورد افسردگی و اضطراب در دانشگاه - امرالد 2017

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer an insight into mental health illness in academia, and its impact on academic identity. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts an evocative autoethnographic approach, utilising diary entries collected during my three-month absence from my university due to depression and anxiety. A contemporary methodology, autoethnography seeks to use personal experience to provide a deeper understanding of culture. In this personal story, the author explore her decline in mental health and subsequent re-construction of her academic identity in order to enhance understanding of the organisational culture of higher education. Findings – This paper illustrates how, rather than being an achievement, academic identity is an ongoing process of construction. Although mental health illness can contribute to a sense of loss of self, identity can be re-constructed during and after recovery. Autoethnographic explorations of depression and anxiety in higher education provide a deeper understanding of an often stigmatized issue, but researchers should be alive to the political and ethical pitfalls associated with deeply reflexive research. Originality/value – There is little autoethnographic research on mental health illness in a university setting. This paper offers unique insights into the lived experience of depression and anxiety in the context of academic life, through the lens of academic identity.

A new academic year: a new academic

An entire year has passed since I walked into work seriously unwell, and walked back out again, unable to return for three months. Today, I sit at my desk surrounded by management meeting agendas, scribbled notes about new initiatives, teaching timetables, student references and, of course, autoethnographic articles I want to read. I am busy, but I am well.

The depression started to lift before I decided to come back to work. When my free sessions with the University counselling service came to an end, I arranged a transfer to a local private fee-paying therapist. I had weekly, intense therapy sessions. I ran three times a week with a women’s running group, just to get out of the house and speak to people. I was very poor at taking my prescribed medication and, as a consequence of putting on nearly two stone and deciding this was entirely the fault of the medication and not the copious bowls of chocolate flavoured rice cereal I consumed every hour, stopped entirely a few months after my diagnosis. I do not recommend this.