UCL-Wellcome Mental Health Science PhD Retreat 2024
To promote well-being and encourage bonding across the cohorts of the Mental Health Science PhD programme, a retreat was organised and graciously funded by the Wellcome Trust.
On a crisp, spring morning, the majority of the four cohorts of the programme met up at King’s Cross station where we embarked on our train journey to Lincolnshire. We had the immense pleasure of spending 2 nights at The Vedanta retreat, a beautiful Elizabethan estate located on a stunning 75 acres of nature and lakes. With the researchers on the programme being engaged daily in thinking about mechanisms of mental health, interventions that benefit it, and examining it with a population-wide lens, it was a perfect way to take care of our own mental health!
Upon arrival, we explored the city of Lincoln, its cathedral, and local pubs before continuing to the retreat centre. After a quick car journey, we were greeted by the estate nestled amongst woodlands, meadows, and lakes. With its swaying trees, chirping birds, and fresh air, the estate had an immediate calming effect on us, so different from our hectic lives in London.
We were thrilled to explore the place, running from one room to the next: the main entrance hall with its cosy sofa in front of a fireplace (which Quentin made sure would always have a fire burning), the pink room with its soft carpet, comfortable lounges, and window sill perfect for reading or simply enjoying the views onto the lake, the spacious bedrooms to rest after days filled with activities, the yoga room to meditate and journal, the games room to play table tennis or table football, and last but not least the spa with its pool, sauna, whirlpool, and steam room!
Over the course of our retreat, we explored and took in the nature surrounding the estate as much as possible. This included long walks along the estate's lake, through the woods and surrounding fields, past animals, and across small streams. One of these walks ended with a pint at the local pub in Branston and another one turned into a highlight for many: A surprise Red Arrow show right above our heads (which probably doubled the length of our walk as we ended up stopping, screaming, waving at, and filming every single manoeuvre, joking that Jon Roiser personally had planned this seemingly private show for us). Some of us also enjoyed the fresh air and read a book on the many benches scattered across the estate while others took advantage of the natural cold plunge next to the lake to start the day.
There was a huge range of activities to choose from. Some of us chose to gather round the fire, teas in hand, and unleash our competitive sides in an enormous and quite chaotic parlour game. Others decided to hit the gym and even did a circuit workout together!
We enjoyed three-course meals throughout our stay, including a range of cuisines such as Mexican, Indian, Thai, Korean and Japanese. Best of all, there was a 24-7 coffee machine and a DIY tea station, where we enjoyed experimenting with concocting our own versions of various teas, incorporating ingredients as diverse as a fruity rose to a mildly spiced ginger to the heady valerian root (the latter greatly aiding us for a peaceful night's sleep!).
The retreat was an incredibly relaxing experience. We also had a chance to connect mind and body by doing a guided yoga session!
On one morning, Ella guided us through a lovely journaling session, combined with a guided meditation. We had the space to reflect on our PhD experience so far, our future goals, and connect to our reasons behind doing a PhD to boost our sense of purpose and motivation.
During the retreat, we took an opportunity to unleash our creativity and participated in an arts and crafts session, where each of us was tasked with making abstract representations of our research topics. Among balloons, colourful markers, and ribbons, we created pieces of art ranging from an anxious balloon character, scary forests to navigate, the planet Earth, human brains, and even a mouse! Sitting in a circle, we pitched and explained our research for one minute as if we were talking to teenagers, using our freshly completed visual aids. This helped us understand the exciting and important aspects of mental health science that everyone on the programme studies, and put our own research into perspective, thinking about it in new ways.
Spending three days together gave us an opportunity to get to know each other better, especially for those of us who don't usually cross paths in London. In between scheduled activities such as yoga or journaling, spontaneous discussions arose around both big and small topics, helping us to get to know each other better as researchers and as people. Big topics included the questions that cut across all of our individual research areas - what is 'mental health'? And what is 'good' mental health research? The small topics, which felt just as important, included what books we are currently reading and what we wanted to be when growing up (a surprising number of us wanted to be veterinarians!).
Hearing about each others' PhD projects was also a great opportunity to expand our knowledge of mental health, and allowed us to see from a broader perspective how different areas of mental health research can complement each other to answer complex overarching questions. We realised that the wonderful thing about an interdisciplinary programme is that we are all different and yet so similar at the same time, as we have all taken different roads to arrive at the same destination. Whilst our individual research areas may differ, we all share a commitment to furthering our understanding of mental health and helping people.
After the retreat, we returned to London with the feeling that we belong to a community with shared values, and that each of our research projects, unique as they are individually, really do form pieces of a larger puzzle. This experience will undoubtedly have a lasting positive impact on our journey as researchers and as individuals committed to advancing mental health science.
