Thanks to a grant from the UBC Wellbeing Strategic Initiative Fund, the UBC Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology is able to bring Dr. Sarah Victor to UBC for a multidisciplinary mental health lecture.
In this lecture, Dr. Victor will describe recent research on the experiences of faculty and trainees with mental health difficulties and build on her own experiences living with psychopathology to provide recommendations for how faculty mentors and clinical supervisors can address these issues and support trainees in their educational journeys and as providers of clinical services. Dr. Victor will use her experiences in different university, geographic, and professional contexts as a student, postdoctoral researcher, and faculty member to facilitate consideration of factors unique to UBC students and faculty as well as broader systemic challenges in the Canadian context. By considering these topics within a framework of diversity, equity, and inclusion, faculty members and graduate students alike can learn ways to decrease stigma and related harmful outcomes on campus and beyond. Learning objectives for the colloquium are for attendees to be able to:
- Describe the prevalence and characteristics of mental health difficulties among psychology faculty and graduate trainees.
- Identify specific behaviours and policies that foster a culture of silence around experiences of mental health difficulties within the field; and
- List specific individual, program, and field-wide changes that could improve the experiences of psychologists and other mental health providers who have mental health difficulties during and after graduate training.
Bio
Dr. Victor is an Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences at Texas Tech University. She completed her PhD in clinical psychology at UBC in 2017. A 2022 recipient of the Association for Psychological Science Rising Star Award, Dr. Victor’s research has centred around suicide risk and prevention in daily life, with a particular focus on members of high-risk groups. Dr. Victor also lives with mental illness and has emerged as a leader in studying mental health difficulties among psychologists, with numerous papers published in top psychological science journals in this area. Her work includes research on the prevalence of mental illness in psychology graduate training programs, how academic psychologists perceive research that overlaps with the researchers’ lived experiences in mental health, and commentaries calling for greater advocacy and support for faculty and trainees with mental illness within the mental health professions. Reflecting the growing interest in this understudied topic, Dr. Victor has given invited talks on her work and advocacy in this area to psychology doctoral programs across the US, as well as to other mental health providers in the US and Canada.
