In the article "Best practices for supporting researchers’ mental health in emotionally demanding research across academic and non-academic contexts" (2025), Quinton et al. examine the mental health toll that emotionally demanding research (EDR) can have on researchers and propose a framework to mitigate its effects. Using thematic analysis of interviews, they propose three key areas of support: fostering a psychologically informed culture, implementing actionable practices, and setting clear boundaries. While their recommendations are thoughtful and timely, this commentary critiques their practical applicability and highlights areas where broader structural changes may be needed.

Quinton et al. rightly draw attention to the everyday emotional hazards encountered in EDR, such as secondary trauma, moral distress, and burnout. Their call for reflexive practice, supervisory debriefings, and institutional support mechanisms is especially welcome in a research landscape where emotional labour is often invisible and unsupported. However, the article stops short of fully grappling with the deeper institutional, cultural, and policy-level factors that perpetuate the very conditions researchers are expected to navigate. The authors acknowledge that meaningful improvements require a whole-systems approach, with active engagement from multiple organisational levels. However, this important caveat remains underdeveloped. Structural factors such as institutional policies, funding priorities, and cultural norms often lie beyond the immediate control of individual researchers or their teams, yet these factors critically shape researchers’ mental health outcomes. 

As identified in Quinton et al.’s article, ethics committees are positioned at key decision-making junctures and could support and/or signpost researchers to relevant resources. Whilst they identify these gaps, what the article does not fully explore is how such committees can be systematically trained, incentivised, or held accountable for this responsibility. Without explicit mechanisms to embed mental health support into institutional governance, the risk is that such recommendations remain aspirational rather than actionable.

Furthermore, while improved access to tailored resources is rightly emphasised, further discussion is needed regarding the pervasive inequities in resource availability across institutions, especially in underfunded or precarious research settings. The reliance on individual researchers and their immediate networks to implement self-care, boundary-setting, and reflective practices shifts the burden of managing emotional risk onto those already vulnerable, rather than addressing systemic pressures.

The guidelines derived from these actionable points (available at https://www.sprintproject.org/guidelines) provide a helpful heuristic for individuals and institutional organisations. It is clear that the aims of these practices try to tackle a culture in which researchers' well-being is seen as a personal responsibility rather than a collective, organisational obligation, providing a whole-system approach to researchers’ well-being. Nonetheless, while Quinton et al. offer timely and necessary guidance, their work also opens the door to further discussion on how institutional structures can be reshaped to support researchers’ well-being in a more systemic and sustainable way.