Mental Health for Doctoral Researchers: Basics of Burnout
with Gayatri Batra
Date: 10 October 2025, 10 - 11 am
Venue: online
In this seminar, we cover the prevalence and impact of Burnout in academic and employee populations. We provide an overview of the Burnout cycle and how to break it, and we emphasize which factors contribute to Burnout and how academics can address them.
'Basics of burnout':
There are many misconceptions about mental illness: what causes it, who is at risk, and how it manifests. Increasingly we are understanding how immense a problem this is in academia.
When does situational or occupational stress become harmful? What is the difference between Burnout and Depression?
Basics of Burnout is a 1-hour seminar including a facilitated discussion which defines the core components of Burnout, presents evidence-based strategies to treat the symptoms, and discusses how to prevent work-related stress.
Outline of the talk:
• Personal and Dragonfly Mental Health introduction
• Basics of Burnout
• Burnout vs Depression and Anxiety
• Group discussion
Trainer: Gayatri Batra was a postdoctoral researcher on Bahrenfeld Campus in Prof. Melanie Schnell's group "Spectroscopy of molecular processes". Gayatri is interested in mental health and works as a volunteer for Dragonfly, a volunteer based group that coordinates to conduct independent research on 1) existing effective mental health initiatives targeting academics, and 2) the current state of mental health among academics. More info: Dragonfly
