Written by: Rei Hirayama
Mental health and burnout are reported at increasing levels across populations in the UK, and in this research we focus particularly on LGBT+ staff in HE. Our findings reveal a dire picture when it comes to mental health and burnout among these groups with 62% of staff responding to our survey reporting having mental health issues and 60% having experienced burnout. When we zoom in and look only at those who have ‘come out’ as LGBT+ or who have been discriminated against, the mental health rate increases to over 80%. This shows a very hostile environment for LGBT+ staff in UK HE which need to be urgently addressed.
Studies researching the relationship between sexual orientation, gender and burnout have recently seen a great deal of development in the mental health field. Dupree and Day (1995) were among the first researchers in gender and sexuality studies that considered the relationship between LGBT+ status and incidence of burnout. After this many researchers have found that gender and sexual minorities are more likely to be subjected to homophobic-related harassment and discrimination, leading to poor outcomes, such as burnout and mental health issue among LGBT+ people (Chung et al, 2009; Kneale et al, 2021).
The HE environment is no exception when it comes to burnout and mental health issues among sexual minorities (Rabelo and Cortina, 2014). It is important here to note the context in which we work, as HE staff. Universities have transformed to become neoliberal marketized institutions with top-down responses that pushes responsibilities down to individuals at the same time as staff are experiencing increased job insecurity and workload. In combination this creates an increasingly hostile environments for LGBT+ staff.
This blog reports on key findings around mental health and burnout which is part of a larger project[1]. Using this survey data, this blog includes results from regression analysis focusing on the relationship between sexual orientation, gender, HE working environment on mental health and burnout issues among LGBT+ staff. It is particularly noteworthy that gender expression (outness) and discrimination are strongly intertwined and related to long-term stress reactions among LGBT+ staffs.
Key Findings[2] of Burnout:
- The overall trend is that non-Hetero and cisgender people tend to have a burnout rate more than 10% higher. Male people have lower burnout rates than Female, non-straight and non-hetero sexual. However, the causality between burnout, Hetero and cisgender people and Man is not statistically significant.
- Ph.D. students, Bisexuals, Gay, Lesbian and Queer (non-binary) are most likely to experience burnout (see Figure 1).
- The direct experience of small slight and gender-related derogatory references or behaviour increase incidences of burnout. This effect seems to be larger than the effect of overwork.
Figure 1: Burnout rate by individual factors
*Dark orange columns show a significance level of 5% or less in logistic regression.
(Quotes)
“Burnout and depression have been caused by overwork combined with the pressure of living for decades as a closeted bisexual”
“My feelings are undervalued, overlooked, overworked and stressed under a bullying culture within the HE workplace.”
“Pressure increased because of having to constantly try to get the organization to recognize the damaging effects of their allowing transphobic comments under the umbrella of ‘academic freedom’. It was hard to find time to do it at all too, with the other work to tackle racism – and my daily paid work to think of. ”
Key Findings on Subjective Mental Health:
- Hetero and cisgender people are less negatively affected by mental health than those with other sexualities or other gendered people.
- Subjective health conditions including long-lasting disease has a significant impact on mental health.
- Ph.D. students have relatively high levels of mental health issues, this is shown responses to open ended questions in our survey. Professors, reported relatively low levels of mental health issues.
- Being open about own gender, sexual orientation and gender transition in the workplace is statistically associated with negative mental health.
- The proportion of workers with mental health problems increased strongly in working environments where gender-related derogatory references or behaviour were witnessed.
- Non-binary staff, including Queer and gender non-conforming people, tend to have more serious mental health issues (see Figure 2).
- Overwork or a working environment that highly pressure staff leads to worse mental health[3] generally in HE (see Figure 3).
Figure 2: Mental health rate by individual factors
*Dark orange columns show a significance level of 5% or less in logistic regression.
Figure 3: Overwork with mental health
72% of those working more than 60 hours have mental health problems, and the figure rises markedly when working more than 70 hours; 82% which is 1.4 times the figure for people who works within legal working hours (60%).
(Quotes)
“Stressed at a high level of online aggression and disagreement in the LGBT+ community in the HE, find it on and offline as very hostile for us”
“My life to date has been influenced by my experience of being marginalised and oppressed to some extent. Fairly often, these feelings are triggered by my workplace.”
“Undervalued by my current institution and as a gay woman in academia. Also, feel that because of these aspects of my identity I will be very unlikely to progress further in my career. I can already see I am becoming negative and cynical and do not wish this to become the sum of me as it worsens”
“It is impossible to ignore the day-to-day homophobia we experience, even indirectly. Therefore, I have to deal with negative mental health issues constantly”
“It was during the first lockdown that I realised I am non-binary and came out to my partner and friends. The spike in racism and the tokenistic responses to BLM with no action to back them up also didn’t help my mental health at the time. ”
Overall, findings from this project show that gender, sexual orientation and outness are related to increased levels of long-term stress causing mental health issues and burnout. This is an alarming sign, as it suggests that differences in gender identity and expression are directly related to LGBT+ staff’s struggles in HE today. The high rate of mental health and burnout among them is closely linked to small slight and gender-related derogatory references and behaviour experienced in their work environment underlining the importance of urgently improving their work environment. To figure out further underlying structures that push LGBT+ staffs into harmful situation, it is thus crucial to analyse this structural problem in HE. In the next blog, I will write about how stress experiences are associated with both individual and environmental factors and cause long-term stress reactions in HE staffs.
References:
Chung, Y.B. et al., (2009). Validating work discrimination and coping strategy models for sexual minorities. The Career Development Quarterly, 58(2), pp. 162-170.
Dupree, P., and Day, H. (1995). Psychotherapists’ job satisfaction and job burnout as a function of work setting and percentage of managed care clients. Psychotherapy in Private Practice, 14, pp. 77–93.
Rabelo, V. C., and Cortina, L. M. (2014). Two sides of the same coin: Gender harassment and heterosexist harassment in LGBQ work lives. Law and Human Behavior, 38(4), p. 378.
[1] We have conducted a national-scale study on the working lives of LGBT+ people in the HE sectors This research project is funded by the UCU and run by researchers at Kent, Sussex and Essex. Our questionnaire covers diverse aspects ranging from outness, discrimination, online work, care responsibility to equality law. We have collected 1857 responses across the UK HE through self-selection and recruitment using LGBT & Equalities Email lists.
[2] The key findings are shown mainly from robust logistic regression with a statistical significance level of 5% or less.
[3] This analysis is shown from the variable of squared working hours