Recent research suggests that academic staff are working almost 9 hours per day every single day of the year on average, contributing to significant mental health issues.
A research project by Elisa Zentveld of Federation University and colleagues surveyed 626 academic staff at Australian universities and found that there was a clear correlation between excessive working hours and high rates of anxiety and depression.
Survey participants reported working an average of 3,256 hours per year – amounting to almost 9 hours per day, 365 days of the year. Professor Zentveld said that while research had indicated that self-reported data could result in participants over-estimating their work hours by around 10%, there was little doubt that many academics worked excessive hours.
“For as long as I have been an academic, working into the night, on weekends, and during annual leave periods is quite normal,” Professor Zentveld said.
“There are people who I collaborate with on projects, and we communicate about the project after 9pm and on weekends.
“Workload models are poorly constructed and segment little time for things such as marking, student consultation, PhD supervision, lecture preparation, and research. To do those things properly requires spending more time on the task than the workload measures.
“Academics are faced with the choice of doing it poorly and following the workload model, or giving up their personal time to do the task at a good level.
“An academic I have collaborated with was working such excessive hours that he ended up in the emergency ward twice.
“This research project revealed a correlation between excessive working hours and high anxiety and depression, which was not at all surprising to me.”
The research, in preprint, found that high workloads are associated with adverse mental health outcomes across the sector, but are yet to be extensively explored. Around 25% of those surveyed experienced moderate to sever anxiety or depression and mental health service utilisation rates were three times as high as the general population.
“Each additional hour worked beyond 1,824 hours was associated with increases in anxiety and depression scores and odds of moderate to severe mental health issues.” The authors found.
