MINDS Conference
Welcome! We are Mental health - INternationally Delivering Support (MINDS), a team of academics working in collaboration with Dragonfly Mental Health. We are interested in fostering healthier and more supportive mental health environments for academics!
The MINDS Conference 2024 took place on
Thursday, April 25th and Thursday, May 2nd!
Thank you for another successful conference!
Conference recordings are now available here!
Thank you to everyone who contributed to and attended MINDS 2021!
The first MINDS Conference took place on Thursday, September 23rd, 2021. This virtual, international conference featured a variety of speakers and discussions on diverse topics, including mental health and career progression stories, mental health literacy, fighting stigma with a highlight on equity, diversity, and inclusion, and more! Click here to learn more about this event.
Fostering a deep-rooted connection between people in academia is one of the core goals of the MINDS Conference. While we all experience surface-level communication during academic life through publications, presentations, specialised conferences, etc., we still often work in isolation. How can we shift the thinking to foster more collaborations and create more supportive environments for each other? Great examples from nature can inspire us to find solutions - The Hidden life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben tells us incredible stories about tree communities. Individual trees grow from the same soil, but it is important for forests to have a root connection between the trees to survive. Trees are able to communicate with each other and share resources when times are hard. Large trees can help small trees to grow and healthy trees can help damaged or ill trees to survive. Can we learn something from them?