By Anonymous Early Career Researcher
During the first years of the pandemic when everything was changing, I got a journal peer-review invitation. These invitations were numerous for many of us in the research field of suicide and self-harm, and I had become more selective on which ones I could accept to peer-review, as work-related commitments were getting very busy for me. One of these invitations I declined was from a research group investigating bullying and harassment amongst university students and young researchers. Although I wouldn’t have time to peer-review that manuscript, I thought: why was the invitation to peer review this particular manuscript sent to me? Did they know that I had experienced severe bullying years back in my research work environment? That couldn’t be true, as I have never talked about it openly, beside with close friends and people that have witnessed this happening to me. I will never know why I got this invitation but still I regret not peer-reviewing that manuscript. This really stayed with me. I hope the authors managed to publish their work.
A quick title search on Pubmed about the topic of bullying and suicide will give you around 10 systematic reviews. 90% of them were on young people and cyberbullying and you will see one on workplace bullying and association with suicidal ideation and behaviours by Leach et al1. Interestingly enough, I couldn’t find any study on harassment and bullying in the field of mental health research. The voices from my old bullied self will now tell me that I didn’t find any review on that topic because I am not good enough with literature searches. So sad that I was thinking this way back then because of everything that was going on.
An amazing podcast published in Nature careers podcast series talks about ‘Bullying in academia: why it happens and how to stop it’2. Professor Mahmoudi (nanomedicine and regenerative medicine researcher) and Dr Jackson (geoscientist) speak about their involvement in focusing on academic bullying and their mission to make things better for students and early career researchers (ECRs). They talk about several important topics, including ways to find support for those bullied, how people who get bullied should not be called “victims” but “targets of bullying”, the violation of human rights when one is harassed and bullied, and the fear of retaliation making people to select silence than speaking up. Professor Mahmoudi is a co-founder and director of the Academic Parity Movement, a non-profit organisation to help excel any student or ECR that had their rights violated through bullying, harassment, and discrimination3. Movements such as this one bring me some hope as a researcher, especially because these issues are still not openly talked about in the field of suicide research – at least not in public, although discussed in chit-chats behind the scenes.
Bullying within the suicide research community exists and is not different to any other research area. It starts verbally, sometimes in a written format – when the bully is not very careful and gets distracted from their powerful position that nothing will happen to them if they disrespect researchers/students – and can continue into withdrawing the name of the target from any publication, until the point that a publication may not see the light of the sun because the target was the leading author in an output. The physical and mental outcomes of experiencing bullying are known, feeling of not being good enough, or smart enough, with ‘confidence’ being “just one more word in the dictionary” but never an actual feeling; a lot of crying and a number of physical symptoms. In my case, my GP, who treated several of my physical health issues from stress, told me: “if you don’t report your bully to the university HR department, I will have to do it”. So I did it, I reported everything I was going through, and HR staff were begging me to make the report official, as other people had also complained about the same person and they could not do anything without an official complaint. I felt I couldn’t do this officially as, by that time, I was still doubting myself as if it was my fault being humiliated for my inefficient work performance. Even now I wonder why many HR departments do not take unofficial reports into account and at least try to investigate those complaints; aren’t they trained enough to understand that targets of bullying are just blaming themselves?
The aim of this blog is an attempt to communicate to many ECRs in our field that bullying can happen in our area of work too. Researchers in the field of mental health are not flawless and abusing power over others is not so rare, unfortunately. Many of us get bullied in different ways. However, there are ways now to help those who are bullied even if universities and HR departments are not equipped to support a person getting harassed. If you are reading this blog and you had or are currently experiencing bullying from your supervisor or PI, know that you are not alone. Search on your university webpage for support in cases of bullying; find information on how to make an anonymous bullying or harassment report. See how your university defines bullying and make a list with tick boxes of the experiences you have suffered from the same person. If there is no university information available, inform the head of school directly or any other person you feel can support you.
Reach out for help when you are able to do so, many of us care.
If you have been triggered by reading this blog post and would like to speak with someone, please reach out to help. Here is a list of international helplines: https://findahelpline.com/i/iasp
References
- Leach LS, Poyser C, Butterworth PWorkplace bullying and the association with suicidal ideation/thoughts and behaviour: a systematic review. Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2017;74:72-79. ↩︎
- Levy A. Bullying in academia: why it happens and how to stop it. Nature Careers Podcast. 28 June 2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02172-w ↩︎
- Academic Parity Movement https://paritymovement.org/ ↩︎
netecr.org 
What a powerful piece and thank you for sharing. But I am so sorry you experienced this yourself. I imagine you’ve gone onto do some amazing things and bravo for being brave. Silence that inner voice!
Important to also raise here that the bullying can also come from collaborators and colleagues. This was certainly the case for me when I was an ECR. As the author here puts it – reach out for support and look for safe ears to listen to your problems.
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