<p>Welcome to the very first episode of Brain Matter Chatter (BMC). In this episode, the BMC team - Ruby, Niveen, Julia, Olivia, and Hayley - comes together to answer three big questions about the show. </p>

Episode 1: Supervisor-Supervisee Relationships with Dr. Melanie-Anne Atkins

Welcome to Brain Matter Chatter (BMC), the #AcademicMentalHealth podcast. Our mission is to raise awareness about issues surrounding mental health in Academia. As graduate students, at various stages, studying neuroscience, our hosts bring a unique experiential and scientific perspective to discussions on mental health and illness. To provide a holistic picture of mental health in academia, we aim to bring a diverse set of guests to BMC. Some of our episodes will serve to highlight the experiences of current graduate students. Others will invoke perspectives from our very own faculty advisors, mental health experts, and special guests who will add professional insights to the discussions. Conversations surrounding mental health can be difficult. With this podcast, we hope to make the conversations easier and more accessible. A podcast platform is personal, on-demand, and varies in degree of engagement; listeners can choose when and where they listen, suggest topics that they want to hear discussed, and even appear on episodes as guests. One episode at a time, we hope to begin planting the seeds for change. There isn’t a single, simple solution to the on-going state of mental health in academia. Cultivating a platform for open conversations about #AcademicMentalHealth is the first step.