Thread by @sarahpressman

Since I was a #graduate student, I’ve been struck by the variability in advisor-student relationships. While some are amazing, fruitful, and inspiring to watch, others are a downward spiral of awfulness and pain. 1/10 #gradschool #AcademicTwitter

Despite this, not only are #professors not taught how to be good mentors, but there is almost never any penalty or remediation for those with awful track records. 2/10 #mentorship

As a #stress and #socialsupport researcher, it was evident to me that advisor-advisee #relationships were likely having an effect on student stress, well-being and health. Surprisingly, no one had ever looked at this before. 3/10

So grateful to my former undergrads(now PhD students) Monica Becerra and @Emily_F_Wong, as well as my former grad (now faculty) Brooke Jenkins for working me to test whether or not having an unsatisfactory advisor relationship was associated with any consequences. 4/10

Our new paper link.springer.com/article/10.100… asked grads from across the US about this. We found, unsurprisingly that having an advisor you are satisfied with is good! Higher positive affect, lower negative affect, better #sleep, & reduced likelihood of doc visits 5/10

More importantly given the high #stress of #gradschool , advisor satisfaction as well as the perception that it is possible to change advisors if you need to, buffered the negative effects of stress on well-being. 6/10

Also on the plus side, #graduatestudents were actually pretty satisfied on average with their advisors (around 80 out of a max of 100)! 7/10

So what do we do? The data is cross-sectional, but most of us realize the harm bad advisors can cause. Can we start acknowledging this and developing consequences like remediation programs? 8/10

In addition, our work suggests that perceptions of #control can make a big difference. Simple things like giving students more ability to choose advisors or switch if things get bad may make a big difference in their well-being (known to be tied to success). 9/10

I know this is cross-sectional and correlational, but it’s a start on what we believe is an important topic for all of us in academia to be thinking about, especially those of us interested in relationships with the potential for serious #health impact. 10/10 T.hanks 4 reading!