Response roundtable on mental health in academia

The relevance of topics, the contexts in which they are studied, and the ways in which the field engages in self-examination continue to evolve alongside societal changes.As circumstances shift, so do the key questions that drive this reflection.It is therefore crucial to create space for these reflections in scholarly discourse, especially in response to issues that may have been previously overlooked.This is why we noted in our editorial that, during our tenure as editors, we would occasionally consider state-of-the-field articles (Ewoldsen et al. 2023).Three papers in this issue (Volume 74, Issue 6) reflect this commitment.Two articles address structural inequities in communication scholarship focusing on racial diversity in authorship and collaboration trends over time (Hatfield et al., 2024;Xu et al., 2024), and one explores the prevalence of mental health issues among media and communication scholars (Hanitzsch et al., 2024).The latter has already sparked a response in the context of U.S. academia (Wright, 2024) and is further enriched here by a roundtable discussion offering perspectives from Asia, Europe, and Africa.These responses engage with mental health considerations from various perspectives, highlighting the profound impact of the working conditions, personal well-being, and broader societal contexts of those who shape the intellectual foundations of our field.