Planning: Positive Mental Health in the Geosciences

所有教育和职业水平的地球科学家都面临心理健康挑战，并且在实地工作、实验室和学习环境中经常被孤立。新冠肺炎疫情以及虚拟课程和会议的使用使地球科学家脱离了他们的支持网络和正常的日常结构，对社区福祉产生了负面影响。心理健康和地球科学的交叉是一个相对未开发的研究领域。这项规划工作将支持社会科学家和地球科学家的聚会，他们将参与对话并审查两年时间内创建的材料，这将产生关于地球科学特定情况下心理健康的新知识，并将这些知识置于更广泛的STEM心理健康背景下，以及结构性种族主义和其他偏见的背景下。通过直接解决如何改变围绕心理健康的制度文化以及如何支持地球科学家的心理健康复原力，拟议的工作旨在为各种群体（包括那些历史上被排除在地球科学之外的群体）的保留，改善福祉和专业发展做出贡献。这些结果最终可能导致更强大的地球科学工作队伍，适当地代表受气候变化和环境不公正影响最严重的社区。目前的跨学科方法涉及社会科学家，对改善地球科学教育和工作场所文化感兴趣的专家，以及主要来自生活经验的专业知识的参与者。为了创建一个围绕心理健康的初步社区，将支持召开为期一天的面对面会议，聚集心理学和地质学专家，分享循证方法和生活经验，发现社区需求，并为全面解决地球科学中的心理健康问题奠定基础。这项规划工作将由美国地质学会（GSA）组织，科学教育资源中心（SERC）协助。结果将用于开发资源，这些资源将通过出版物、演讲和专业发展活动广泛传播给参与者群体。通过这些努力，该项目寻求创造变革推动者，以便引导地球科学界朝着制定一项协调一致的建议，制定一项全面的心理健康支持和培训方案。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Geoscientists at all education and career levels experience mental health challenges, and are frequently isolated during fieldwork, in the laboratory, and in learning environments. COVID and the use of virtual lessons and meetings removed geoscientists from their support networks and normal daily structure, leading to negative impacts on the wellbeing of the community. The intersection of mental health and the geosciences is a relatively unexplored area of study. This planning effort will support a gathering of social scientists and geoscientists, who will engage in a dialogue and review materials created over a two-year time period, which will result in new knowledge about mental health in situations specific to the geosciences and will situate these within the broader STEM mental health context, and within the context of structural racism and other bias. By directly addressing both how to change institutional cultures around mental health and how to support geoscientists’ mental health resilience, the proposed work is intended to contribute to retention, improved wellbeing, and professional development for a wide variety of groups, including those who have been historically excluded from the geosciences. These outcomes could ultimately lead to a stronger geoscience workforce that appropriately represents the communities most affected by climate change and environmental injustice.The current interdisciplinary approach involves social scientists, experts interested in improving educational and workplace culture in the geosciences, and participants whose expertise may come primarily from lived experience. To create an initial community around mental health, a one-day in-person convening will be supported to gather experts from psychology and geology to share evidence-based approaches and lived experiences, discover community needs, and create a foundation for addressing mental health in the geosciences in a comprehensive way. This planning effort will be organized by the Geological Society of America (GSA) and facilitated by the Science Education Resource Center (SERC). Outcomes will be used to develop resources that will be widely disseminated through publications, presentations, and professional development activities for the cohort of participants. Through these efforts, the project seeks to create change agents in order to orient the geoscience community toward a coordinated proposal to develop a comprehensive program of mental health support and training.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.