Please help I am welcome any advice. I am desperate for helps to deal with university in the middle of my appeal.
Reading my department's comments on my appeal letter makes me unease and a bit angry. But I am aware that I need to get rid of my anger and seek positive advice to fight back. Please help, please.
XX cried uninhibitedly when questioned about her progress and, on one occasion, suggested that she would respond positively to military-like personal abuse as a means of supervision.
This statement is from the head of PGR who stated in response to my appeal.

Well if you asked them to behave in an inappropriate and unprofessional manner regarding supervision, and they refused and your complaint is about quality of supervision then I'm afraid it's relevant.

They shouldn't be discriminating against you for mental health problems and if they thought you did have MH problems they have a duty of care to work with you in a constructive manner. Did you ever tell them you had problems or did they guess it?

Though if you did ask them for "military-like personal abuse" they can use that against you.

If your mental health issues are either preventing you from fulfilling your work or causing problems in any capacity for others, then they have every right to sign you off on sick leave. Where they can legally go from there will depend on the country and their legislation.

Your recorded comments about needing military-style abuse are not helpful to you but I am not sure that they even need that to remove you from the work environment.

You need proper legal advice. We are happy to help on here but none of us are legal experts I suspect.

Hi Navidad

I did sit in on an appeals panel once as a student representative (I was supposed to be there so at least there was another student present who was part of the final decision on the appeal). If you have any specific questions about what the actual appeal panel meeting is like, I ,might be able to answer some of them (although it may differ from place to place). I would say to have any hope of a positive outcome for your appeal, you definitely need to keep a very cool head. Try not to be bated into losing your temper or displaying any negative behaviour - which of course can happen when in such a high pressure situation and no doubt feeling that things being said are unfair.

What are the possible outcomes of your appeal / what are you actually aiming for? If they are asking you to leave and you are appealing, their decision may in part be based on whether or not they think that if you DID stay you would have supervisors you could work with and you could actually see the PhD through. So if your relationships with your current supervisors are very bad, this could be difficult. Anyway, as I say, feel free to get in touch. Whatever the reasons for how you are in this situation, you are not alone. Others have gone through it. Have you tried searching for appeals on this forum? You might find some tips for people were had success.

All the best,
Tudor

Ps. One person I know successfully appealed against being made to leave, and her PhD was changed to an MPhil and her mental health issues officially acknowledged - she was given extra time to write things up etc.