STRESSORS &
MENTAL HEALTH
An Important Note of Disclosure
These resources are not intended to diagnose or treat any mental health issues but serve as an informational guide for further exploration of one’s well-being. Please see the Support Resources below for contact information if you are seeking assistance. If you or someone you know is struggling or is in a mental health crisis, call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org.
Support Resources
During times when you might be feeling low, sad, or anxious we hope that some of the resources from the Wellness Hub can be used as guides to help inform you about the feelings you might be experiencing.
Crisis/Emergency Resources
Need Help? The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has important resources you should know about.
- If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.
- To learn how to get support for mental health, drug, and alcohol issues, visit FindSupport.gov.
- To locate treatment facilities or providers, visit FindTreatment.gov or call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 800-662-HELP (4357).
Additional Supportive Resources
Looking for support? Here is a list of supportive resources available to you to get you started:
- Faculty and Staff Assistance: This is an internal Employee Assistance Program (EAP), providing services including confidential consultations, crisis interventions, short-term counseling, assessments and referrals.
- Therapy Assistance Online: TAO is an interactive, web-based program that provides guided activities to help overcome anxiety, depression and other common concerns.
- Employee Assistance Program for USG employees: You and your family and household members have access to the Acentra Health (formerly KEPRO) Employee Assistance Program* (EAP). Services are free and confidential. The program is available for all employees, except students, who work 20 hours or more.
- Mental Health America – Online Screening: Mental Health America offers multiple screening questionnaires to provide information, resources and tools to help you understand and improve your mental health. (These are not diagnostic tests, and are not a substitute for a full assessment and care by a mental health provider; this resource is intended to help provide a starting point.)
- Mental Health First Aid: This page from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing provides numerous links to resources regarding mental health in general, as well as resources about specific conditions and resources geared to specific populations.
- Project Healthy Minds: A mental health tech non-profit, Project Healthy Minds is democratizing access to mental health services by building the world’s first free digital mental health marketplace, destigmatizing mental health by partnering with culture-makers, and improving access and affordability by advocating for innovative workplace investments in employee mental health. The non-profit is focused on closing the treatment gap in America by attacking these primary barriers to care: stigma, discoverability, and affordability.
Anxiety & Depression Center of America
- The Anxiety and Depression Center of America provides resources and more information on feelings of hopelessness and extreme worry or fear.
- Find support in peer communities with others who may also be having similar experiences.
University Resources to Create a Support Network
Want to create a support network? Here are resources provided by the University to jump start your network:
Support, Belonging & Building Community: Faculty Affinity Groups
Georgia State also has Faculty Affinity Groups which bring together groups of people from different backgrounds. Learn more by clicking the link below:
Faculty Supporting Students
We’ve gathered information on how faculty can support students on a dedicated page in the Wellness Hub. Click here to visit the page.
A Note for Staff
While the resources at the Wellness Hub are aimed at faculty specifically, Georgia State has resources to help staff and students in their wellness journeys.
Staff
Staff are eligible for these same resources that faculty are:
- Faculty and Staff Assistance is open to staff as well as GSU faculty. It is an internal Employee Assistance Program (EAP), providing services including confidential consultations, crisis interventions, short-term counseling, assessments and referrals.
- Therapy Assistance Online (TAO): Staff as well as faculty area also eligible for TAO. TAO is an interactive, web-based program that provides guided activities to help overcome anxiety, depression and other common concerns.
A Note for Students
While the resources at the Wellness Hub are aimed at faculty specifically, Georgia State has resources to help staff and students in their wellness journeys.
Students
- Be Well Panthers Initiative: This initiative is designed to help students to be well and do well. Georgia State University offers services and programming aimed at maintaining students’ mental and physical well-being, including the Student Health Clinic, Student Health Promotion, the Counseling Center and the Access and Accommodations Center, among other efforts.
- The Counseling Center is available to students in the event of a crisis at any time by calling 404-413-1640.
Faculty Support for Students: Further information about how faculty can support students, including how to help students in crisis, is available on the Wellness Hub here.
Online Learning Resources
For more self-directed learning on this topic, explore these courses offered by Linkedin Learning, available to you at no charge through the university. Please note that this isn’t an exhaustive list of courses on this topic. For more about LinkedIn Learning at Georgia State, visit the website of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Online Education.
Events from the Office of Employee Development and Wellness Services (EDWS)
The Office of Employee Development and Wellness Services (EDWS), a unit of Human Resources Administration, engages university employees through workshops, book clubs, mindfulness, guided meditation, support groups, and other events.
A calendar of wellness-related events is located on the Human Resources events page. Click the link below to access the information in a new window. On the HR events page, scroll to the bottom to view the Wellness Events calendar.
Burnout
Worksheet & Podcast
Check out Dr. Patrice Butner Jackson’s (also known as Dr. PBJ) podcast Disrupting Burnout as she provides tools for educators on beating burnout and serving in their purpose by clicking here to go to her YouTube channel.
Fried. The Burnout Podcast is on a mission to #endburnoutculture, and has interviews with a variety of guests telling their stories and providing guides to recovery. Click here to go to the podcast’s YouTube channel.
You can search for these podcasts if you’d rather to just listen to them on Apple, Spotify, or other platforms.
We also recommend filling out this “Is It Stress or Is It Burnout?” worksheet to figure out if what you are experiencing is stress or burnout, and to better learn how to distinguish the two.
Academic Articles
Do you think you might be experiencing burnout? Take a look below at some of our recommended reads to dig deeper into the topic.
- Dean, L., Churchill, B., & Ruppanner, L. (2022). The mental load: building a deeper theoretical understanding of how cognitive and emotional labor overload women and mothers. Community, Work & Family, 25(1), 13–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2021.2002813
- Hyatt, K. (2022). Stressors in Higher Education That Lead to Burnout and Solutions to Avoid It. Journal of Business & Educational Leadership, 12(1), 110–125. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/stressors-higher-education-that-lead-burnout/docview/2697170741/se-2. (A PDF is available here.)
- Zambrana, R. E., Hardaway, C. R., & Neubauer, L. C. (2022). Beyond role strain: Work–family sacrifice among underrepresented minority faculty. Journal of Marriage and Family. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12865
Online Learning Resources
For more self-directed learning on this topic, explore these courses offered by Linkedin Learning, available to you at no charge through the university. Please note that this isn’t an exhaustive list of courses on this topic. For more about LinkedIn Learning at Georgia State, visit the website of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Online Education.
Stress
Video: When You Change Your Mind About Stress, You Can Change Your Body’s Response to Stress
What do you know about stress? Have you been taught to think of stress as bad? Take a listen to this TED Talk with Dr. Kelly McGonigal as she introduces mechanisms to stress reduction.
Please click here to view the video if it does not appear above.
Podcast from the American Institute of Stress: Break Free from Stress & Anxiety
If you are having trouble viewing this video, click here to go directly to YouTube.
It can be helpful to manage stress by learning more about the subject. Check out our recommended reads below for more resources.
Academic Articles
- Johnston, K., Tanwar, J., Pasamar, S., Van Laar, D., & Bamber Jones, A. (2022). Blurring boundaries: work-life balance and unbounded work in academia. The role of flexibility, organisational support and gender. Labour & Industry, 32(2), 139–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/10301763.2022.2081902
- Tran, Q. H. N. (2023). Exploring Relationships Among Overload Stress, Work-Family Conflict, Job Satisfaction, Person–Organisation Fit and Organisational Commitment in Public Organizations. Public Organization Review, 23(2), 759–775. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-021-00589-3
Feeling ready to make a plan on how to tackle your stress, one hour at a time? This helpful worksheet from Positive Psychology can help take you on the right first step. Prefer to listen to information? We recommend this podcast episode from the American Institute on Stress on how to break free from stress and anxiety. (You can also watch the recording in the YouTube video embedded below this section. A list of links to podcast services where you can access the series regardless of platform is available here.)
Perfectionism
Research suggests that perfectionism impacts self-identity and mental health. There are multiple theories and frameworks regarding the causes and nature of perfectionism; Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Perfectionism by Sarah J. Egan, et al., provides an excellent review.
To read a relevant chapter of the book, click here to download a PDF.
If you are interested in accessing the e-book, Georgia State faculty can access the book through the University Library at no charge. Click here to access the materials at the University Library.
Citation:
Click here to view the TED talk if you cannot see the video above.
If you want to better understand your unique form of perfectionism, the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS) is a free, well-validated, 35 question assessment you can use to gain insight or the 8 question assessment, Short Almost Perfect Scale, that was designed to measure certain attitudes people have toward themselves, their performance, and toward others.
Read scholarly work created by Dr. Kenneth Rice et. al., on the Short Form of the Revised Almost Perfect Scale to further explore perfectionism in high performance and self-critical evaluation. (Citation: Rice, K. G., Richardson, C. M. E., & Tueller, S. (2014). The Short Form of the Revised Almost Perfect Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 96(3), 368–379. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2013.838172)
The Centre for Clinical Intervention module provides strategies to cope with change.
Use these downloadable worksheets from PositivePsychology.com to help you set goals to address your perfectionism, identify activators or triggers, and better understand how your perfectionism may impact others.
Online Learning Resources
For more self-directed learning on this topic, explore these courses offered by Stacks at State and Linkedin Learning, available to you at no charge through the university. Please note that this isn’t an exhaustive list of courses on this topic. For more about LinkedIn Learning at Georgia State, visit the website of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Online Education. For more information about Stacks at State, click here.