Appendix A7: Mental Health For the Engineering Student

The fact that many key figures of thermodynamics have had tragic lives makes good material for (dark) jokes in class. Sadi Carnot died of cholera aged 36. Boltzmann hanged himself, Lavoisier was decapitated, von Mayer was forcibly detained in an asylum, and Rudolf Diesel drowned in the British Channel. “And now let’s see what chapter 7 is all about, you’re going to see it’s a boatload of fun!” The last time I joked about this with someone, I jested that I should add an appendix about mental health at the end of the thermodynamics textbook I wrote. It took a minute and then something in my mind listened seriously. The thought popped: why not, actually, add an appendix about mental health in an academic, technical textbook? After all, a lot of help is provided just in the outreach itself, in normalizing that it’s okay to think about well-being. My experience is that engineering universities foster a culture of powering through mental health issues, instead of learning to engage with…