Episode 5: Christian Molina Aguilar

Christian Molina-Aguilar speaks on the joy, resilience, and struggle of doing science in Mexico.

About Christian

Being a researcher is only ever one aspect of your life, but one facet impacts and is impacted by the whole. Christian Molina-Aguilar shares how the combined stresses of a demanding research career, a difficult introduction to parenthood, and growing responsibilities have led him to enable over 8,000 researchers in Mexico to share their experience of mental health.

Christian is a postdoctoral researcher at the International Laboratory for Human Genome Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and participated in the eLife Community Ambassadors training programme in 2022.

Transcript

Milly McConnell (intro): Welcome to eLife Community Voices, the podcast shining a spotlight on the remarkable individuals behind research. Join us each episode as we feature personal stories that reflect the changing culture of research. We're here to shed light on the remarkable achievements and challenges faced by those who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of knowledge.

Daisy Veysey: Welcome to another episode of eLife Community Voices. My name is Daisy Veysey – yes, it rhymes – and I'm eLife's Social Media Manager, and I'll be your host today.

We're joined by Christian Molina-Aguilar. Christian is a postdoctoral researcher at the International Laboratory for Human Genome Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where his research focuses on the processes behind liver damage, dysfunction and cancer.

He became part of eLife's community through the Ambassadors training programme in 2022, where he embarked on a research project exploring the mental health experiences of researchers in Mexico. This was a personal endeavor for Christian, who talks with me both about what it's like to be a researcher in Mexico, and about his own struggles with mental health and how they were compounded by a busy research career, language barriers, a pandemic, and even being a new parent to twins. This episode features discussions of suicide, so please take care while listening. 

Welcome, Christian. I am really delighted to be interviewing you today. We've worked together in the past while you were part of our eLife Ambassador programme, something which we'll talk about more later. So it's lovely to see you again. To get started, could you just tell me a little bit about yourself?

Christian: Hello. For me, it's really a pleasure to be here. I am Christian Molina. I am an academic technician at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. I am working in Mexico. I am working right now in the research institute called International Laboratory for Human Genome Research. I have been here for eight years and, talking about me, I am a biologist. My PhD was in biomedical science, all in Mexico. Since my undergraduate thesis, I have been working on research related to liver diseases, different diseases – especially in fatty liver disease, cirrhosis and liver cancer – and how the diet, mainly caloric restriction, has a protective effect in the development of these diseases. I am trying to help understand the molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms activated during caloric restriction, basically, in the models. I usually work in cell lines, cell culture, in mice and rat models, and also with human samples.

Daisy: Thank you. So you're from Mexico – you live there and you work there today. We've actually talked recently on this podcast about some of the difficulties faced by researchers in the Global South, which Mexico is usually considered to be a part of, for example in terms of mobility, the ability to travel and work in other countries. In Mexico specifically, I believe funding and policy for research has been changing quite a bit in recent years. What is the experience of researchers in Mexico as you know it?

Christian: Yeah, I want to start by telling you, or describing for all the people, who are the Mexicans. So when you travel to Mexico or meet a Mexican in other parts of the world, you will always find a great friend in them. If you come to Mexico, someone will offer you help, or maybe you will suddenly end up in a party or in a little town around Mexico eating good food and good drinks – very, very sure that the people will open the doors of their houses. So I think it's not because I am Mexican, but I think the Mexican people usually try to be happy. We like to have parties. We like to be with friends and with family.

Talking about how are the researchers working in Mexico and how are their work conditions? To give a background and try to understand how scientists work in Mexico, for example, according to the world of statistics, Mexicans were the number one in hours worked by year, and that’s calculated in 2,128 hours. The last country with the lowest hours worked is Denmark, and they only have 1,363. That is 36% more in Mexicans compared with Denmark, for example. And if you compare with the salaries or how the hours can be extrapolated to the income in each family, the other data is the monthly salary after tax. In Mexico, we are in position 54 with $708 on average. And if you remember Denmark, they are in position number seven with $3,428. So, in comparison, Danish people are earning 4.8 times more compared with Mexicans. In general, we are very hardworking, but it is not related to the earnings of the families.

Now, talking about the science, as you tell us it can be difficult to access grants if you don't have contact with researchers in other countries in which the science is growing and they have more money. 

Finally, in the last weeks, some researchers are focusing on trying to identify how is mental health since the students are passing to PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and finally with researchers or staff. And usually, in many countries, it was shown that the researchers usually have more stressful areas of work compared with other types of work. And since the students start their careers, if you compare people who are in arts or in other areas, the people who are profiling to be researchers, we have less mental health conditions, and we have less support of the institutions because usually it's not in the focus of the institutions.

Daisy: There's often this expectation placed on researchers to work abroad during their career. How do you feel about this? Have you done it and what keeps you in Mexico at the moment?

Christian: Usually the people think to go outside the country, trying to find better opportunities. But in my case, because I have family – and we can talk later about my family – and because I have family it was difficult to move to another part of the country or another country. But here I can find in this institute, in the International Laboratory for Human Genome Research, I found a good opportunity to grow, to continue growing, and especially in this institute, the researchers have many opportunities to collaborate with people or researchers from other countries. So maybe my reality is not the representation of all of the country, but I come from a little university, so I understand how it's hard to find a good position to continue growing and doing good research.

Daisy: So do you feel it's kind of worked out for you at the moment?

Christian: Yeah, I think the opportunities are there. But sometimes we have many troubles because firstly it’s the language. Sometimes it's difficult to learn in Mexican or Latin American countries. You need to pay for special schools to learn. So if you compare with other countries in which they learn three, four, five different languages since being kids, we are not on the same level. Maybe Mexicans, more Mexicans, can find opportunities to continue.

Daisy: Well, you've led me perfectly to my next question, and you were hinting on this before, talking about mental health research in Mexico. You joined us as an eLife Ambassador a few years ago. For any of our listeners who don't know, this is a training and activism programme that we run that tries to equip researchers globally to champion responsible practices in research in their own communities. As an Ambassador with us, you ran a survey on mental health in researchers in Mexico with your group, Achicopaladito – I think I said it right?

Christian: Yeah, excellent!

Daisy: Can you tell me about the project and how it's going, and tell us what Achicopaladito means?

Christian: For me, it's great to talk about Achicopaladito, so I will start with Achicopaladito, and then I will explain the survey and some results that we already have.

Achicopaladito is the name of the team that, at the end, we are working together on the survey. The name – and this is for people who don't speak Spanish, and maybe it's not a Spanish, it's a Mexican word. When you feel down – in days when you feel down and you need a good cup of coffee, or to read a good book or a hug from your mother, your husband, and you start to feel better, that is the translation of Achicopaladito. In Mexico, when some people ask you, “do you feel Achicopaladito?” – it is that you feel bad but not so bad and it’s very easy. You can drink a good coffee, you can take five minutes and the energy comes again. So we decided on the name Achicopaladito because the survey is focused on mental health, but trying to include more Mexicans in our message.

So the first challenge for the people who are listening to this podcast is, try to say Achicopaladito very fast, and you can tell us if you can pronounce Achicopaladito! 

To continue about the programme, the Ambassador programme, when I received the invitation and I was accepted, I couldn't believe it, because it was like a dream for me. I started with the programme and we needed to decide how we can impact for our people, our country, or if we want to create a bigger programme or a bigger initiative. So at the end, I decided to start to talk about mental health in Mexicans, but very focused in researchers and academic areas. In Mexico, usually, mental health is not very easy to talk about between friends, family, at work, because all the time we have deadlines, we have the students, we have experiments, the experiments don't work and you need to resolve it – so we are all the day, all days, all the years, trying to be creating new things. So that's a stressful environment that usually can impact the mental health of the students and for the researchers.

Now, why decide to talk about mental health? I need to do a little parenthesis to talk about my personal experience in my family. In that moment, I had my older daughter, Sophie and, in the middle of the pandemic, my wife, to start with, was pregnant. She was pregnant, and pregnant with twins. So that was very, very exciting news for us. But at the same time, in the middle of the pandemic, with the stressful environment, and because the pregnancy was dangerous, that was a very stressful environment for me and for our family. At the same time, I was in the Ambassador programme, I was in an English class learning, and at the same time I had a position as a postdoctoral researcher. So at the end, when the twins were born, they weren’t born with good health. So usually all night they were crying, and in the morning we needed to start work, so we didn't have good sleeping periods, we had stress, and for the first time I experienced periods of high anxiety and the suicidal thought crosses my mind three times.

For the first time, I decided to start to learn about mental health because I felt those levels of anxiety and I’d never felt that feeling. And in that moment, I decided to start to understand and talk about mental health. For me, it was very difficult to understand what was happening with my suicidal thoughts. At the end, thanks to my family, my daughter, my wife, my friends and the people here in the institute, I could resolve that moment and start to recover my mental health.

I want to say thank you to the people of eLife because, although I was in the programme, and I decided to go out of the programme, the people helped me and they gave me information and led me to feel comfortable with my process, with my moment. Thank you very much to the people of the Ambassador programme and eLife in general. I remember how they said, “don't worry, take your time, resolve your situation, and when you feel better, you can return to the Ambassador programme”. And that led me to feeling good and understanding that sometimes you can have some difficult moments, but many people can understand you, can help you, and at the same time can give you the time to resolve your personal condition and return to your programme. So at the end, I finished the programme as an Ambassador, and in that moment, I decided that I needed to start a mental health survey for Mexican researchers to try to understand what is happening with us.

So maybe some people who are listening to this podcast can feel right now in some condition like that. So I want to tell you, you can move for different stages of your mental health – it is not a static condition – but you can find people who can help you to recover your mental health.

Daisy: I'm so glad that we and my colleagues were able to support you in this time. Of course, having a young family is surely a beautiful experience, but juggling that alongside health issues, a pandemic, a research career, and all of the unique challenges that you specifically have there, it's a lot of compounding stresses for anyone, and I'm really glad that you were able to find a way out today.

If I can go back, what are some of the results that you've seen from your survey so far? How has the project gone so far?

Christian: Thank you. We closed the survey in October because October, if you remember, is the month of mental health, so put it in your calendar! So we are now in the period of data cleaning and some things like that, but we already have some of the first results and I can share two or three important data.

Fortunately, we have more female answers comparing with men. In Mexico and in Latin America, usually the parity or the number of researchers between women and men is not the same. So it's important to have the experience of the woman. Fortunately, too, we have all levels represented: students in undergraduate, two PIs and technicians, academics, postdoctoral – so we have enough information to compare the condition in the different areas and different ages.

At the end, we have 8,098 participants. So for us this is amazing, because this is the first time that we are trying to do this type of survey. We decided to collect the best set of questions that can be used to be compared with another population from other countries. So we were checking some papers from the USA, from Australia, from the Netherlands, for the UK and for other countries, trying to have a set of questions that can be enough to give us information about Mexicans, and that information can be replicated or compared with information that already exists. 

So at the end, we are very happy because right now we are working in the data analysis and we are preparing – we hope to publish something in October this year, in the month of mental health. So we are preparing the first approximation of the results from the survey.

Daisy: I can't wait to hear about those results, and I'm sure we'll be sharing them through eLife for anybody who wants to keep up with that too. 

What do you think needs to happen to support researchers like you, especially when it comes to mental health and your surrounding community on a larger scale?

Christian: I think many institutions, from government to researcher institutions, and also students and researchers, are talking more fluidly and more openly about mental health. So for me, it's very good that people can talk about mental health, can talk about how they feel today. The opportunity to talk with people and talk about that – I think that is very important for us. In Latin America in general, it's not usual to talk about your mental health. You only go to work, work all day and go out, and that's it. But during the day, when you can share how you feel with your friends or your parents or your family, that helps you to have more tools to be better or, if you are in a bad moment, to try to go out and modify your feelings in that moment.

So, some researchers have shown that if we have good mental health and we are relaxing in a good environmental work area, we can be more productive. And one little but very important thing for researchers is the creativity. If you don't have good mental health, it's like being an artist. You can't imagine some ideas, some new answers for some problems or some researchers’ questions. So when you are in a good institute where mental health is one of the more important topics for the people, the creativity usually is higher. So for me, the researchers, the scientists are similar – like artists. You need to feel the idea. You need to feel well. You need to feel good to come up with ideas and try to resolve some scientific questions.

Daisy: Thank you. I like your emphasis on peer support there as well – it's really important. On that theme, to close us out, is there anything else you'd like to say to anybody like you, or any advice you'd like to give to people who are listening?

Christian: Oh yes, of course. I want to use two languages – Spanish and English. 

So, this is my message for you in Spanish:

Hasta hace pocos años, no creí posible que podría comunicarme en inglés. Ya que en mi país, y in generalmente en  latino américa, no es fácil aprender el idioma.

The translation is: Until a few years ago, I did not believe it was possible for me to communicate in English, since in my country, in Latin America, and maybe in other countries in general, it is not easy to learn it. 

In Spanish:
Debes pagar en escuelas especializadas que te enseñen el inglés u otros idiomas. Y yo empecé formalmente mi aprendizaje hasta los 26 años. Y aunque ahora tengo treinta ocho años,  y ha sido un camino largo, te invito a ti a que no te rindas en este proceso.

You must pay for schools that teach you the language, especially English. And I formally began my learning until I was 26 years old. So, comparing to other countries, the kids are learning two, three or more languages. It has been a long road. Do not give up on this process.

Finalmente – aunque puede ser una barrera. Estoy seguro de qué podrás mejorar y de verdad te llegarán las oportunidades qué tanto has estado esperando. El día de hoy yo estoy aquí con la  oportunidad de hablar y mañana puede ser tú el que tenga esta oportunidad.

So I conclude, although it may be a barrier – the language – I am sure that you will be able to improve and the opportunities that you are waiting for will really come to you. So today I am here with Daisy and eLife, but maybe tomorrow can be your time, can be your opportunity, and you can be here.

Daisy: I love what you did there, Christian. I'm sure that's going to inspire some people. Thank you. And I'm so pleased to hear that you're doing better now. I think it's really amazing and inspiring to see you turning your experiences into something that can help other people and expand research in this way, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the results of your survey, so keep us posted when that comes out.

Thank you for being so candid with us, Christian. It's been lovely to speak to you as always.

Christian: Was a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much again to eLife, because you really changed my life. Thank you to you and all the crew, all the people that I don't usually see in the eLife platforms. I know many people are working to create this opportunity for us. So thank you very much for the invitation. Thank you very much to you. Thank you very much, eLife.

Milly (outro): That's all for this episode of eLife Community Voices. I hope you've enjoyed it and you'll join us again as we hear more about the human side of science. To stay up to date with our community, you can follow us at eLife Community on Threads and X. Thank you once again to the Communities team at eLife, and Neil Whiteside at freedom:ONE for editing this episode. Thank you for listening and see you next time.