mental health and phd students

‘You have to suffer for your PhD’: poor mental health among doctoral researchers – new research

Lecturer in Social Sciences, University of Westminster

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Cassie Hazell has received funding from the Office for Students.

University of Westminster provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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PhD students are the future of research, innovation and teaching at universities and beyond – but this future is at risk. There are already indications from previous research that there is a mental health crisis brewing among PhD researchers.

My colleagues and I studied the mental health of PhD researchers in the UK and discovered that, compared with working professionals, PhD students were more likely to meet the criteria for clinical levels of depression and anxiety. They were also more likely to have significantly more severe symptoms than the working-professional control group.

We surveyed 3,352 PhD students, as well as 1,256 working professionals who served as a matched comparison group . We used the questionnaires used by NHS mental health services to assess several mental health symptoms.

More than 40% of PhD students met the criteria for moderate to severe depression or anxiety. In contrast, 32% of working professionals met these criteria for depression, and 26% for anxiety.

The groups reported an equally high risk of suicide. Between 33% and 35% of both PhD students and working professionals met the criteria for “suicide risk”. The figures for suicide risk might be so high because of the high rates of depression found in our sample.

We also asked PhD students what they thought about their own and their peers’ mental health. More than 40% of PhD students believed that experiencing a mental health problem during your PhD is the norm. A similar number (41%) told us that most of their PhD colleagues had mental health problems.

Just over a third of PhD students had considered ending their studies altogether for mental health reasons.

There is clearly a high prevalence of mental health problems among PhD students, beyond those rates seen in the general public. Our results indicate a problem with the current system of PhD study – or perhaps with academic more widely. Academia notoriously encourages a culture of overwork and under-appreciation.

This mindset is present among PhD students. In our focus groups and surveys for other research , PhD students reported wearing their suffering as a badge of honour and a marker that they are working hard enough rather than too much. One student told us :

“There is a common belief … you have to suffer for the sake of your PhD, if you aren’t anxious or suffering from impostor syndrome, then you aren’t doing it "properly”.

We explored the potential risk factors that could lead to poor mental health among PhD students and the things that could protect their mental health.

Financial insecurity was one risk factor. Not all researchers receive funding to cover their course and personal expenses, and once their PhD is complete, there is no guarantee of a job. The number of people studying for a PhD is increasing without an equivalent increase in postdoctoral positions .

Another risk factor was conflict in their relationship with their academic supervisor . An analogy offered by one of our PhD student collaborators likened the academic supervisor to a “sword” that you can use to defeat the “PhD monster”. If your weapon is ineffective, then it makes tackling the monster a difficult – if not impossible – task. Supervisor difficulties can take many forms. These can include a supervisor being inaccessible, overly critical or lacking expertise.

A lack of interests or relationships outside PhD study, or the presence of stressors in students’ personal lives were also risk factors.

We have also found an association between poor mental health and high levels of perfectionism, impostor syndrome (feeling like you don’t belong or deserve to be studying for your PhD) and the sense of being isolated .

Better conversations

Doctoral research is not all doom and gloom. There are many students who find studying for a PhD to be both enjoyable and fulfilling , and there are many examples of cooperative and nurturing research environments across academia.

Studying for a PhD is an opportunity for researchers to spend several years learning and exploring a topic they are passionate about. It is a training programme intended to equip students with the skills and expertise to further the world’s knowledge. These examples of good practice provide opportunities for us to learn about what works well and disseminate them more widely.

The wellbeing and mental health of PhD students is a subject that we must continue to talk about and reflect on. However, these conversations need to happen in a way that considers the evidence, offers balance, and avoids perpetuating unhelpful myths.

Indeed, in our own study, we found that the percentage of PhD students who believed their peers had mental health problems and that poor mental health was the norm, exceeded the rates of students who actually met diagnostic criteria for a common mental health problem . That is, PhD students may be overestimating the already high number of their peers who experienced mental health problems.

We therefore need to be careful about the messages we put out on this topic, as we may inadvertently make the situation worse. If messages are too negative, we may add to the myth that all PhD students experience mental health problems and help maintain the toxicity of academic culture.

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• “ Unique Challenges and Opportunities for Supporting Mental Health and Promoting the Well-being of International Graduate Students ” by Jenny J. Lee (University of Arizona)
• “ Promoting Graduate Student Wellbeing: Cultural, Organizational, and Environmental Factors in the Academy ” by Julie R. Posselt (University of Southern California)
• “ Balancing Access and Safety for Graduate Students with Mental Health Issues ” by Hannah S. Ross (Middlebury College)

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• Webinar: “ A Framework on Graduate Student Mental Health: CGS Members Share Ideas and Guidance ” (3.16.2021)
• Hironao Okahana, “Pressing Issue: Mental Wellness of Graduate Students” (4.9.2018)

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Cassie M Hazell

January 12th, 2022, is doing a phd bad for your mental health.

9 comments | 72 shares

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Poor mental health amongst PhD researchers is increasingly being recognised as an issue within higher education institutions. However, there continues to be unanswered questions relating to the propensity and causality of poor mental health amongst PhD researchers. Reporting on a new comparative survey of PhD researchers and their peers from different professions, Dr Cassie M Hazell and Dr Clio Berry find that PhD researchers are particularly vulnerable to poor mental health compared to their peers. Arguing against an inherent and individualised link between PhD research and mental health, they suggest institutions have a significant role to play in reviewing cultures and working environments that contribute to the risk of poor mental health.

Evidence has been growing in recent years that mental health difficulties are common amongst PhD students . These studies understandably have caused concern in academic circles about the welfare of our future researchers and the potential toxicity of academia as a whole. Each of these studies has made an important contribution to the field, but there are some key questions that have thus far been left unanswered:

• Is this an issue limited to certain academic communities or countries?
• Do these findings reflect a PhD-specific issue or reflect the mental health consequences of being in a graduate-level occupation?
• Are the mental health difficulties reported amongst PhD students clinically meaningful?

We attempted to answer these questions as part of our Understanding the mental health of DOCtoral researchers (U-DOC) survey. To do this we surveyed more than 3,300 PhD students studying in the UK and a control group of more than 1,200 matched working professionals about their mental health. In our most recent paper , we compared the presence and severity of mental health symptoms between these two groups. Using the same measures as are used in the NHS to assess symptoms of depression and anxiety, we found that PhD students were more likely to meet criteria for a depression and/or anxiety diagnosis and have more severe symptoms overall. We found no difference between these groups in terms of their overall suicidality. However, survey responses corresponding to past suicidal thinking and behaviour, and future suicide intent were generally highly rated in both groups.

42% of PhD students reported that they believed having a mental health problem during your PhD is the norm

We also asked PhD students about their perceptions and lived experience of mental health. Sadly, 42% of PhD students reported that they believed having a mental health problem during your PhD is the norm. We also found similar numbers saying they have considered taking a break from their studies for mental health reasons, with 14% actually taking a mental health-related break. Finally, 35% of PhD students have considered ending their studies altogether because of their mental health.

We were able to challenge the working theory that the reason for our findings is that those with mental health difficulties are more likely to continue their studies at university to the doctoral level. In other words, the idea that doing a PhD doesn’t in any way cause mental health problems and these results are instead the product of pre-existing conditions. Contrary to this notion, we found that PhD students were not more likely than working professionals to report previously diagnosed mental health problems, and if anything, when they had mental health problems, these started later in life than for the working professionals. Additionally, we found that our results regarding current depression and anxiety symptoms remained even after controlling for a history of mental health difficulties.

The findings from this paper and our other work on the U-DOC project  has highlighted that PhD students seem to be particularly vulnerable to experiencing mental health problems. We found several factors to be key predictors of this poor mental health ; specifically not having interests and relationships outside of PhD studies, students’ perfectionism, impostor thoughts, their supervisory relationship, isolation, financial insecurity and the impact of stressors outside of the PhD .

the current infrastructure, systems and practices in most academic institutions, and in the wider sector, are increasing PhD students’ risk of mental health problems and undermining the potential joy of pursuing meaningful and exciting research

So, does this mean that doing a PhD is bad for your mental health? Not necessarily. There are several aspects of the PhD process that are conducive to mental health difficulties, but it is absolutely not inevitable. Our research (and our own experiences!) suggests that doing a PhD can be an incredibly positive experience that is intellectually stimulating, personally satisfying, and gives a sense of meaning and purpose. We instead believe a more appropriate conclusion to draw from our work is that the current infrastructure, systems and practices in most academic institutions, and in the wider sector, are increasing PhD students’ risk of mental health problems and undermining the potential joy of pursuing meaningful and exciting research.

Reducing this issue to the common rhetoric that “PhD studies cause mental health problems” is problematic for several reasons: Firstly, it ignores the many interacting moving parts at work here that variably increase and reduce risk of poor mental health across people, time, and place. Secondly, it does not acknowledge the pockets of incredibly good practice in the sector we can learn from and implement more widely. Finally, it reinforces the notion that poor mental health is the norm for PhD students which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy- and itself ignores the joy of pursuing a thesis in something potentially so personally meaningful. Nonetheless, a significant paradigm shift is needed in academia to reduce the current environmental toxins so that studying for a PhD can be a truly enjoyable and fulfilling process for all.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Impact of Social Science blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our  Comments Policy  if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

Image Credit: Geralt via Pixabay. 

About the author

Dr Cassie M Hazell (she/her) is a lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of Westminster. Her research is on around mental health, with a special interest in implementation science. She is the co-founder of the international Early Career Hallucinations Research (ECHR) group and Early-Mid Career representative on the Research Council at her institution.

Dr Clio Berry is a Senior Lecturer in Healthcare Evaluation and Improvement in the Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She is interested in the application of positive and social psychology approaches to mental health problems and social outcomes for young people and students. Her work spans identification of risk and resilience factors in predicting mental health and social problems and their outcomes, and in the development and evaluation of clinical and non-clinical interventions.

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My own experience of doing a PhD (loneliness, the lack of routine, imposter syndrome) has led to my discouraging my daughter, who has a history of mental health issues, from considering it at the moment, despite her having the academic aptitude and even a topic. I would hazard a guess that the problems are worse in the humanities than in the applied sciences, where most PhD students tend to work as part of research teams and be well supported in more structured environments.

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Fascinating research… I had a terrible PhD, but most of the mental health issues arose after the fact. If you ever conducted another survey it would be interesting to include those who had recently finished a PhD.

Looking at your follow up BJPsyche paper, I noticed you haven’t gone into the correlation between subject and mental health. I’d be interested to know how sciences vs humanities compared.

I see that your work is very restrained in discussing the causes of mental health issues, and I’m sure you have plenty of hypothesis. In my experience, a key factor is that there is no mechanism to hold supervisors to account for the quality of their supervision. (Linking to the point above, I believe in the sciences supervisors with poor outcomes do suffer repetitional damage – not so in the humanities.)

I’d also add that the UK’s Viva system, which I believe is unique globally, is a recipe for disaster – years of work evaluated over the course of just a couple of hours by examiners who, again, are not held accountable in any way.

I wrote my experience up here: https://medium.com/the-faculty/i-had-a-brutal-phd-viva-followed-by-two-years-of-corrections-here-is-what-i-learned-about-vivas-5e81175aa5d

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What can universities do to support the well-being and mental health of postgraduate researchers? February 1st, 2022

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About the PhD in Mental Health Program

The PhD degree is a research-oriented doctoral degree. In the first two years, students take core courses in the Departments of Mental Health, Biostatistics, and Epidemiology, in research ethics, and attend weekly department seminars. Students must complete a written comprehensive exam (in January of their second year), a preliminary exam, two presentations and a final dissertation including presentation and defense. Throughout their time in the department, we encourage all doctoral students to participate in at least one research group of the major research programs in the department: Substance Use Epidemiology, Global Mental Health, Mental Health and Aging, Mental Health Services and Policy, Methods, Prevention Research, Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetic Epidemiology, Psychiatric Epidemiology, and Autism and Developmental Disabilities.

PhD in Mental Health Program Highlights

mental health dept. in a school of public health

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What Can You Do With a Graduate Degree In Mental Health?

Sample careers.

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Curriculum for the PhD in Mental Health

Browse an overview of the requirements for this PhD program in the JHU  Academic Catalogue , explore all course offerings in the Bloomberg School  Course Directory .

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The Department of Mental Health covers a wide array of topics related to mental health, mental illness and substance abuse. Faculty and students from multiple disciplines work together within and across several major research areas.

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Program Faculty Spotlight

Judith K. Bass

Judith Bass, PhD '04, MPH, MIA, is an implementation science researcher, with a broad background in sociology, economic development studies, and psychiatric epidemiology.

Renee M. Johnson

Renee M. Johnson, PhD, MPH, uses social epidemiology and behavioral science methods to investigate injury/violence, substance use, and overdose prevention.

George W. Rebok

George Rebok, PhD, MA, is a life-span developmental psychologist who develops community-based interventions to prevent age-related cognitive decline and reduce dementia risk.

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Social predictors of doctoral student mental health and well-being

1 School of International Studies, Binzhou Medical University, Shandong, China

2 Department of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, United States of America

Kaylee Litson

David f. feldon, associated data.

All data and analysis files are publicly available on Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/p7vje/ ).

Graduate students’ mental health and well-being is a prominent concern across various disciplines. However, early predictors of mental health and well-being in graduate education, specifically doctoral education, have rarely been studied. The present study evaluated both the underlying latent classification of individuals’ mental well-being and predictors of those classifications. Results estimated two latent classes of students’ mental health and well-being: one class with generally high levels of mental well-being and one with lower levels of mental well-being. Regression analyses showed that mentoring in the second year of doctoral study, certainty of choice in the third year, and both academic development and sense of belonging in the fourth year were positive predictors of membership in the higher mental well-being class. In contrast to some prior studies, demographic variables were not related to the identified well-being classifications. Regression analyses further showed that mental well-being was negatively related to participants’ number of publications and research self-efficacy, indicating a problematic relationship between scholarly productivity and confidence and well-being. These findings may be used to identify and provide targeted support for students who are at-risk for having or developing lower levels of mental well-being in their graduate programs.

Introduction

Mental health and well-being is an increasingly prominent concern in graduate education [ 1 ]. Sixty-eight percent of university presidents acknowledged that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, student mental health ranked among their most pressing issues [ 2 ]. Doctoral students are an at-risk population with respect to mental health, illustrated by a study of over two thousand Ph.D. students showing that students in graduate programs are six times as likely as the general population to experience both depression and anxiety [ 3 ]. Similarly, recent literature reported high levels of burnout and mental health problems in doctoral biomedical students [ 4 , 5 ]. Further, doctoral students’ research activity may exacerbate depression [ 6 ]. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [ 7 ] recently released results of an 18-month survey on mental health, substance abuse, and well-being in higher education, and urged institutions, faculty, and staff to take action in facilitating and addressing the substantial mental health and well-being concerns of students within higher education.

Graduate students, especially doctoral students, report stressors such as peer pressure [ 8 ], high workload [ 9 , 10 ], feelings of uncertainty [ 11 ], lack of work-life balance [ 3 ], and unproductive mentor-mentee relationships [ 12 ]. However, experiences of social support [ 13 , 14 ], academic engagement, financial stability [ 15 , 16 ], appropriate work–life balance [ 17 ], and satisfactory supervisory relationships [ 18 ] show positive effects on mental well-being either directly or through their mitigation of external stressors. Similarly, a sense of belonging to department, degree program, or laboratory, mitigates negative mental health symptoms [ 18 , 19 ] and correlates positively with academic success and mental well-being [ 20 ]. To date, it is unclear when and how such supportive structures impact students’ mental well-being as they navigate through graduate education.

Accordingly, understanding the ways in which aspects of doctoral students’ experiences impact mental well-being is vitally important to assess potential harms or identify positive influences in graduate education processes and structures. Social-environmental factors are highly influential, because socio-psychological well-being hinges on “having supportive and rewarding relationships, contributing to the happiness of others, and being respected by others” (p. 144) [ 8 ]. To link the mechanisms and functions of graduate socialization and well-being, this study examines 1) which social-environmental factors impact doctoral student mental health and 2) when during doctoral study do these factors have the largest impact on doctoral student mental health. Specifically we examine the patterns and predictors of Ph.D. student mental well-being in their fifth year of doctoral education by evaluating latent profiles of mental well-being and assessing which factors over time predict students’ membership within those profiles.

Socialization as a framework for understanding doctoral student experiences

Graduate socialization is defined as “a process of internalizing the expectations, standards, and norms of a given society (discipline), which includes learning the relevant skills, knowledge, habits, attitudes, and values of the group that one is joining” [ 21 ]. This process typically unfolds over time as students engage in coursework and supervised research. As students acquire more knowledge and personal autonomy over their research, they gradually internalize a scholarly identity and take on the role of independent scholar. However, individual experiences in these settings vary widely, and maladaptive socialization experiences—such as lack of social support, lack of sense of belonging to departments or labs, and unsatisfactory mentor-mentee relationships—can introduce difficulties or completely derail progress toward degree attainment. Such maladaptive experiences are reported across students from all backgrounds, but those from historically marginalized demographic groups (e.g., women, first-generation college students, people of color) are significantly more likely to experience such difficulties [ 22 – 26 ].

Multiple individuals play important roles in doctoral student socialization. The primary faculty advisor or supervisor (also referred to as “principal investigator” [PI] in some disciplines due to their provision of grant-funded research opportunities and monetary support for the students they supervise) is often considered to have the greatest influence on socialization, due to their direct oversight of students’ scholarly activities and access to resources that shape the development of a research career [ 27 , 28 ]. Similarly, departmental structures and supports can impact the ease and clarity with which students navigate degree requirements [ 29 ]. Further, peer interactions both within and outside the immediate research environment can impact day-to-day experiences that influence sense of belonging and emotional well-being [ 30 ].

Predictors of doctoral student mental health

Correlative and predictive studies of graduate and doctoral student mental health have identified multiple relationships with socialization factors. For example, detachment from program activities and negative perceptions of campus atmosphere increase graduate students’ stress levels [ 31 ]. Likewise, 44% of doctoral students in another study regarded positive academic socialization as empowering, which correlated positively with research performance and negatively with stress and anxiety [ 32 ]. However, doctoral students also identify anxiety related to uncertainty regarding the quality and quantity of their scholarly work as common challenges to their mental health and well-being [ 33 ].

Mentorship by supervising faculty likewise plays a major role in graduate, especially doctoral, students’ well-being. High quality mentorship is associated with high levels of mental well-being and life satisfaction, while low quality mentorship can result in stress and depletion [ 32 , 34 , 35 ]. Positive supervisory faculty relationships are closely associated with increased self-efficacy [ 36 ], which, in turn, has a positive relationship with mental well-being [ 37 , 38 ]. Moreover, McAlpine and McKinnon [ 39 ] found that when doctoral mentors did not intellectually support students’ work, those students reported elevated levels of both frustration and isolation.

Some studies have suggested that gender and other identity-based demographic characteristics may exacerbate mental health challenges and affect perceived fit in graduate school. Evans et al. [ 3 ] reported that transgender students and cis-gendered women were significantly more likely to experience anxiety and depression than cis-gendered men. Likewise, the well-being of women in doctoral programs was hindered by the conflicts they perceived between their own values and priorities and the social structures they depended on [ 8 ]. Other external stressors, such as conflicting responsibilities [ 40 ], and difficulties in navigating institutional climate [ 41 , 42 ] might deliver more challenges to women compared to men and result in lower level of life satisfaction and mental well-being. International students also encounter elevated stress and mental health challenges due to social isolation and pressures to adapt to new cultural norms [ 43 , 44 ]. Some frequently mentioned stressors that lead to mental health and well-being problems for international students include acculturation difficulties [ 45 – 47 ], lack of social and financial support [ 48 , 49 ], perceived discrimination [ 50 ] and marginalization [ 51 , 52 ].

Current study

Despite high levels of concern, most work previously conducted has evaluated predictors and correlates of mental health and well-being within cross-sectional research. As such, there is little known about the antecedents of mental health and well-being as a function of students’ specific experiences within their doctoral training over time, specifically identifying early predictors that might impact doctoral students’ positive or negative mental well-being. Using the lens of graduate socialization theory in this study [ 53 , 54 ], we use a latent profile approach to identify distinct subpopulations on the basis of mental health and well-being, then examine potential predictors and outcomes of latent profile membership based on primary mechanisms of socialization within doctoral programs.

In the biological sciences, most fifth year Ph.D. students have finished coursework and are working on their dissertations with an eye toward upcoming career opportunities. Consequently, it is a period of multiple potentially stressful transitions and events. For most people, such periods of transition often exacerbate mental health struggles [ 55 ]. Thus, the present study has several specific aims: First, based on responses to a survey assessing mental health and well-being, we assess the number of latent profiles that best characterize mental well-being within our national sample. Second, we assess the likelihood of profile membership as a function of demographic variables such as gender, first-generation student status, race/ethnicity, and international student status. Third, we examine the ability of key socialization variables to predict the likelihood of mental health profile membership, including sense of belonging, commitment to degree completion, academic and intellectual development, and mentoring relationships. Lastly, we assess the extent to which mental health profile membership was differentially predicted by academic outcomes, including research skill development, publication output, research self-efficacy, and program attrition.

Materials and methods

Utah State University IRB has approved our research involving human participants. IRB number is 9317. The written form of consent has obtained.

Participants and procedures

This study was part of a larger, longitudinal study on Ph.D. student skill development in cellular and molecular biological sciences. Participants were recruited upon entering their doctoral programs in the Fall of 2014 and screened upon entering the study to ensure they met the study criteria of being a doctoral student in the biological sciences in the United States (more information about study criteria can be found in [ 56 ]). In total, 336 participants were recruited from 53 institutions across the United States. Of the institutions represented, 42 are classified as R1 (highest research activity), 7 institutions are R2 (higher research activity), and the remaining 4 institutions fall in other Carnegie categories (i.e., Doctoral/Professional Universities).

The present study utilized demographic data collected at the outset of the study, as well as students’ self-reported sense of belonging, certainty of choice, academic development, and mentoring satisfaction collected in the second, third, and fourth year of doctoral study as predictors. The present study further used students’ self-reported mental well-being data collected in students’ fifth year of doctoral study as the primary outcome.

Participants were recruited through one of two methods. First, department chairs and program directors for the 100 largest biological sciences Ph.D. programs across the U.S. were contacted and asked to inform entering doctoral students of the study. Second, emails were sent to listservs relevant to doctoral students in the sciences. To incentivize study participation, students received a $400 annual payment. The full procedure was approved by the Utah State University Institutional Review Board. Participants completed an annual battery of surveys, in addition to providing writing samples and an account of their scholarly productivity each year.

During the first year of the study, students completed a demographic questionnaire that included questions about their race/ethnicity, gender, parents’ education level, and international student status. Each year, participants completed annual surveys about their experiences and productivity. Participants were excluded if they did not respond to at least one item on the mental well-being questionnaire used in the present study, thus a total of N = 206 doctoral students were included in the present study. Participants included 40% men, 60% women, and less than 1% non-binary persons; 83% white and Asian students, 17% racially/ethnically minoritized students; 73% continuing-generation students, 27% first-generation students; and 79% domestic students, 21% international students. When assessing the gender and generation status composition across race/ethnicity, the sample included 31 women and 19 men from Black, Latino/a, and Native groups, and 139 women and 84 men from white and Asian groups, 44 women and 30 men who were first-generation college students, and 126 women and 73 men who were continuing-generation college students.

Demographics

Students indicated their race/ethnicity by selecting one or more of the following: American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian or Asian American; black or African American; Latino/a; Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; white. Students’ responses were aggregated to create a measure of racially/ethnically minoritized status (RMS), where students who selected only a white and/or Asian identity were coded as majority; all other students were coded as RMS (0 = majority; 1 = RMS). To evaluate gender, students self-reported their gender as female, male, and/or other/nonbinary (female = 0; male = 1, other/nonbinary = 2). To evaluate which students were first- compared to continuing-generation college students, students were asked to indicate the highest degree obtained by their parent(s); students who had no parent with a 4-year college degree were coded as first-generation (0 = continuing-generation; 1 = first-generation). Finally, students self-reported whether or not they were an international student (0 = no; 1 = yes).

Mental health and well-being

Mental health according to the American Psychological Association, is defined as “a state of mind characterized by emotional well-being, good behavioral adjustment, relative freedom from anxiety and disabling symptoms, and a capacity to establish constructive relationships and cope with the ordinary demands and stresses of life.” [ 57 ] In the current study, mental well-being was assessed using both a scale of items and a general single-item. The scale of items included 8 items related to mental well-being [ 58 ]:

• I lead a purposeful and meaningful life.
• My social relationships are supportive and rewarding.
• I am engaged and interested in my daily activities.
• I actively contribute to the happiness and well-being of others.
• I am competent and capable in the activities that are important to me.
• I am a good person and live a good life.
• I am optimistic about my future.
• People respect me.

Items were evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale, from 1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree . Assuming a single factor structure, the composite reliability was very good (McDonald’s Ω = 0.91). In addition to the mental well-being scale, participants were asked the single question about their mental health “In general, how is your mental health?” with responses ranging from 1 = Poor to 5 = Excellent . This single item was evaluated in all analyses that included the pre-established measure of mental well-being to evaluate a more robust construction of self-reported mental health alongside mental well-being.

Sense of belonging

Sense of belonging to a lab is a subscale of three items from Bollen & Hoyle [ 59 ], with an example item of “I see myself as part of the lab/research group community” measured on an 11-point scale with responses ranging from 0 = Strongly disagree , 5 = Neutral , to 10 = Strongly agree . Within the present study, this scale showed high reliability, McDonald’s Ω = 0.96.

Certainty of choice

Certainty of choice is a subscale of three items from Nora & Cabrera [ 60 ], with an example item of “I am certain this institution is the right choice for me” measured on a 3-point Likert scale with responses ranging from 1 = Strongly disagree , 2 = Neutral , to 3 = Strongly agree . Within the present study, this scale showed adequate reliability, McDonald’s Ω = 0.86.

Academic development and satisfaction

Academic development and satisfaction is a three item subscale from Nora & Cabrera [ 60 ], with an example item of “I am satisfied with my academic experience at this institution” measured on a 3-point scale with responses ranging from 1 = Strongly disagree , 2 = Neutral , to 3 = Strongly agree . Within the present study, this scale had adequate reliability, McDonald’s Ω = 0.87.

Mentoring relationships

Mentoring relationships were evaluated using 35 items from Graduate Advising Survey for Doctoral Students (GASDS) [ 61 ]. The scale utilized four subscales relevant for the doctoral-advisor mentoring relationship: advisor selection criteria (8 items), function of advisor (16 items), satisfaction with advisor (7 items), and time to degree (4 items). Item responses ranged from 1 = Disagree to 3 = Agree . Advisor selection criteria represents the match or fit between mentors and mentees, and an example item of this subscale is “My primary advisor is doing research that interests me.” Function of advisor represents actions an advisor does or does not do that impacts the advisee, and an example item of this subscale is “My primary advisor teaches me strategies for succeeding in my field.” Satisfaction with advisor exemplifies a mentee’s satisfaction with their primary advisor, and an example item of this subscale is “I currently have the primary advisor I want.” Time to degree is representative of the support structures implemented to help students progress toward their degree, with an example item being “How helpful has your primary advisor been to you in terms of progressing toward the completion of your degree?” Item subscales (average of each subscale) were evaluated in analyses.

Research skills

Year 5 research skills were measured by doctoral students’ sole-authored research paper that was submitted in their fifth year of doctoral study, and were not to have been edited or contributed to by others. Two independent reviewers rated each document on 12 research skills on a scale from 0 to 3.25 according to rubrics [ 56 , 62 , 63 ]. Interrater reliability as measured by intraclass correlations was good, 0.818 to 0.969. Skills included: introducing/setting the study in context (INT); appropriately integrating primary literature (LIT); establishing testable hypotheses (HYP); using appropriate experimental controls and replication (CTR); experimental design (EXP); selecting data for analysis (SEL); data analysis (ANA); presenting results (PRE); basing conclusions on results (CON); identifying alternative explanations of findings (ALT); identifying limitations of the study (LIM); discussing implications of the findings (IMP) [ 56 ]. Skills were evaluated as a composite score in the present study. More information about the measure of research skills are provided in detail in [ 56 ].

Publication output

A survey on the publication details of the participants was annually administered from year one to year six (2014–2020). Publications were assessed by whether a respondent has a publication or not in a given year (binary variable: 0 for no, and 1 for yes); the number of publications a respondent had each year; total number of authors for each publication; author number of the respondent on each publication (first author, second author, etc.); the titles and journal names of each publication, and the journal impact factor by year for each publication. The publications were then cross-checked with Web of Science and additional sources such as Google Scholar after data collection (see Roksa et al. [ 64 ] for more details). Publications within and up to year 5 were included in the present analyses.

Self-efficacy

Year 5 research self-efficacy was evaluated using the Research Experience Self-Rating Survey [ 65 ]. Questions from this survey asked students to self-rate their ability to perform ten specific research tasks on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = not at all to 5 = a great deal). Items include the ability to complete skills necessary for producing research publications, such as “To what extent do you feel you can understand contemporary concepts in your field?” and “To what extent do you feel you can statistically analyze data?”

Statistical analysis approach

The primary focus of the study was to examine correlates and predictors of mental health and well-being. We used a person-centered approach to first evaluate mental well-being in order to understand the extent to which we could classify individuals into groups with varying and potentially different responses to the mental well-being questions. Therefore, we first used latent profile analysis to identify latent subgroups of mental well-being and mental health. Latent profile analysis (LPA) is a person-centered quantitative approach used to identify unmeasured subgroups of participant responses to continuous items. Participants were then assigned to a profile with the highest likelihood of resembling their responses to the items, allowing for interpreting results in terms of categorical grouping differences.

After identifying and describing the number of latent profiles, we assigned individuals to profiles and evaluated predictors of the profiles using logistic regression analysis. Specifically, we ran nine logistic regression models to examine predictors of the latent profiles of mental health profiles. Model 1 evaluated static predictors of mental well-being classifications, such as gender, first-generation student status, racially minoritized student status, and international student status. Models 2 through 8 evaluated longitudinal predictors of mental well-being classifications, with Model 2 evaluating the doctoral students’ certainty of choice across years as predictors of mental well-being classifications, Model 3 evaluating Academic Development, Model 4 evaluating Sense of Belonging to a lab, Model 5 evaluating Advisor Selection Criteria, Model 6 evaluating Satisfaction with Advisor, Model 7 evaluating Function of Advisor, and Model 8 evaluating time to degree. Models 9, 10, and 11 respectively evaluated within time predictors of mental health and well-being, including number of publications, research self-efficacy, and research skills. For models that used repeated measures, predictors were evaluated as discrete variables (e.g., Year 2 Certainty of Choice was one variable and Year 3 Certainty of Choice was a separate variable) and were allowed to correlate across all time points. All analyses were conducted in M plus version 8.4 [ 66 ]. Missing data was handled using full information maximum likelihood with robust standard errors and Montecarlo integration in M plus .

The first step in our analyses entailed evaluation of statistical latent profile models, comparing alternatives that estimated from one to four classes. Next, logistic regression analyses were used to estimate the likelihood of belonging to one of the identified latent profiles as a function of independent variables of interest.

Identifying profiles of doctoral student mental health

Table 1 shows the model fit indices across these four models, and we evaluated these fit indices in combination with theoretical interpretability of the classes. When evaluating model fit, the Vuong-Lo-Mendell-Rubin (VLMR) likelihood ratio test was used to evaluate the best-fitting model, likewise indicating that the 2-class model was better fitting than the one-class model (VLMR = -2399.49, p = .0014), but showing that the three-class model did not fit better than the two-class model. Additionally, the Bayesian Information Criteria (BIC) values continually decreased as more classes were added though the values flattened and created an “elbow” at the 2-class model. Entropy and classification indices were then evaluated, where values closer to 1.0 for both indicate greater accuracy of classification. Entropy was the highest for the two-class model at .95 and classification probabilities for classes 1 and 2 respectively were .97 and .99, indicating very good classification rates of individuals to latent classes. Thus, the two-class model was selected as the best-fitting model and was used in further analysis.

The two latent classes that emerged included a class with lower and more variable levels of well-being and a class with higher and more stable levels of well-being (see Fig 1 ). Specifically, all items showed higher mean values in the “higher well-being” profile ( n = 160) compared to the “lower well-being” profile ( n = 46). Notably, there is less variability and very high means in the high well-being class, indicating that most students in this class selected maximum values across mental well-being questions. Conversely, the lower mental well-being class showed greater variability in their average scores across items. We additionally evaluated latent profiles examining only the 8 items from mental well-being subscale [ 55 ], dropping the self-report mental health item. Results showed essentially the same two profiles. Participant classifications obtained from the 8-item LPA and the reported 9-item LPA were correlated at r = .989.

Items correspond to the order of items in the mental well-being scale in the methods section.

Predicting doctoral student mental health

Logistic regression analyses were used to assess socialization, skill, and demographic predictors of profile classification. Results were evaluated by examining the 95% confidence interval of the odds ratio (OR). Confidence intervals containing 1.0 indicated that the predictor did not differentially predict classification, while confidence intervals that did not contain 1.0 did differentially predict classification. Results ( Table 2 ) showed no differences in profile classification across gender in reference of men vs other genders (OR = 1.05, 95% CI [0.53, 2.07]), first-generation student status (OR = 0.87, 95% CI [0.45, 1.65]), underrepresented minority status (OR = 1.58, 95% CI [0.68, 3.68]), and international student status (OR = 1.01, 95% CI [0.48, 2.09]). Thus, no differences in the likelihood of being included within either of the mental well-being profiles were associated with demographic characteristics.

* = 95% CI does not contain 1.0. Results should be interpreted as follows: e.g., As certainty of choice in year 3 increases, the odds of being in the higher mental well-being profile are 2.56 that of being in the low mental well-being class.

Logistic regression analysis of socialization variables across years yielded many effects ( Table 2 ) that were determined interpretable. To better interpret values, results were all divided by 1 and interpreted accordingly. Certainty of choice in year 3 predicted differences in mental well-being profile classification (OR = 2.56, 95% CI [1.18, 5.59]), indicating that the odds of being in the higher well-being profile was 2.56 times that of being in the lower well-being profile. In year 4, both academic development (OR = 3.13, 95% CI [1.20, 8.20]) and sense of belonging (OR = 1.32, 95% CI [1.01, 1.69]) predicted differences in mental well-being profile classification. One facet of mentorship, satisfaction with advisor, in year 2 was the strongest predictor at the mental well-being classifications (OR = 4.35, 95% CI [1.18, 16.67]).

Logistic regression analysis to evaluate the association between doctoral students’ mental health membership and the number of peer-review publications in year five yielded significant results ( Table 3 ). The number of peer-review publications in year five was related to different mental well-being profile classifications (OR = 0. 61, 95% CI 0.40, 0.91]), indicating a negative association between higher mental well-being and the number of publications in the same year, and the odds for participants with more publications of being in the higher well-being profile was 0.61 times that of being in the lower well-being profile; alternatively, this can be interpreted as the odds for participants with more publications of being in the lower well-being profiles was 1.64 (1/0.61) times that of being in the higher well-being profile. When assessing the research self-efficacy in year five, results likewise showed negative relationships between research self-efficacy and mental well-being (OR = 0.23, 95% CI 0.14, 0.39]), and the odds of being in the higher well-being profile was 0.23 times that of being in the lower well-being profile; in other words, the odds of being in the lower well-being profile was 4.35 (1/0.23) times that of being in the higher well-being profile. Logistic regression analysis results showed that demonstrated research skills in year five did not differentially predict classification in doctoral students’ mental health and well-being.

* = 95% CI does not contain 1.0.

Discussion and conclusions

Results identified two stable profiles of doctoral student mental health and well-being, one that reflected consistently positive responses to each item included in the Diener et al. [ 58 ] scale (item means from 3.5–4.5 out of 5) as well as a general self-report item of mental health, and one that reflected lower and more variable item responses (item means from 2.2–3.6 out of 5). The odds of belonging to either profile did not differ significantly by doctoral students’ demographic characteristics. These findings are contrary to prior studies which have reported gender differences of experiencing anxiety and depression [ 3 ] or mental conflicts in fulfilling multiple roles to maintain life balance [ 8 , 67 ]. Unlike much of the prior research reported on graduate student mental health and well-being, our sample is derived from doctoral students primarily at high research activity (R1) institutions as well as students only from one field of research: lab-based biological sciences. As such, students within this sample may differ from the general doctoral student population. Consequently, finding no demographic differences in mental health and well-being among bioscience doctoral students in this study implies that students have similar levels of mental health and well-being regardless of gender, race, and ethnicity within this population. It is also possible that the present sample size was too small to detect minute differences in mental health and well-being across demographic groups. Future research should take these interpretations and limitations into consideration moving forward.

In contrast, the socialization variables certainty of choice, academic development, sense of belonging, and satisfaction with advisor predicted significant differences in the likelihood of belonging to one latent profile over the other in earlier years of doctoral study. In each case, more favorable scores significantly predicted membership in the latent profile with higher scores on the mental health and well-being scale. Notably, satisfaction with a primary advisor (i.e., dissertation chair, research supervisor) was a significant, positive predictor of positive mental well-being in early years of doctoral education. These results align with prior research that positive, high quality mentoring contributes to positive mental well-being [ 34 ]. Further, the satisfaction with advisor subscale is designed to represent actions that the mentor does to help and encourage their student’s success. Results thus show that students who are satisfied with the mentorship they receive in year two are more likely to have greater levels of positive mental well-being, supporting, highlighting the importance of positive, high-quality mentoring experiences between Ph.D. students and their primary advisor as a preventative measure for negative mental health and well-being. Future work on mentorship networks (e.g., receiving mentorship from postdocs, peers, dissertation committee members, etc. in addition to mentorship from the primary advisor) is needed to more fully understand the extent to which mentorship impacts student mental health and well-being.

Of note is that these data were collected longitudinally rather than at a single point in time, which allowed us to assess early predictors of positive and negative mental health and well-being. Specifically, mental health and well-being were evaluated in students’ fifth year of doctoral study, which is a transient time when doctoral students begin their transition to professional careers [ 12 ]. Predictors of mental health and well-being, however, were evaluated as early as the second year of doctoral study and were specifically chosen because they are relevant to socialization theory and have the potential to act as intervening variables. For example, the finding that students with positive mentoring relationships in year two were 4.4 times as likely to belong to the high mental health and well-being profile in year five suggests that it may be possible for administrators, student support services, department heads, and other mentors to provide additional support to students who are unsatisfied with their mentor as early as year two. Such intervention may reduce these students’ chances of having negative mental well-being in later years of their graduate education. Further, the finding that participants with lower certainty about their choice to pursue their Ph.D. in year three were 2.6 times as likely to belong to the lower mental health and well-being profile the following year indicates a potentially important risk factor. These factors could potentially be assessed to provide targeted support for students who are more at-risk for having or developing lower levels of mental well-being.

While we are hesitant to claim these relationships as causal, there is one early, strong predictor of student mental well-being in year five; that is satisfaction with the primary advisor in year two. Administrators of doctoral programs may use these findings to implement simple program evaluation assessments to understand student-advisor interactions in the early years of doctoral education to determine whether students are satisfied with their mentorship, to what extent students require additional mentorship or support, and/or to help mentors meet the needs of individual students with the intention to improve (or at least not impair) student mental well-being as students progress through their doctoral programs. Asking questions about students’ mentorship experiences as part of a routine assessment will 1) remove the onus from the student, 2) can help administrators identify students who may be most at risk for reporting negative mental well-being, 3) help mentors identify what their students need since this is not always clear nor communicated, and 4) can provide students with ways to redress mentorship issues, find additional mentorship support, or potentially change mentors. Such intervention programs addressing graduate student and postgraduate mental health have begun to emerge (e.g., [ 68 , 69 ]), and results from studies such as the one presented here show important, early socialization predictors of mental well-being that can and should be addressed at a systematic level to better support doctoral student mental well-being. Intervention programs for mentorship are beyond the scope of this study but may be beneficial for addressing student concerns when unsatisfactory mentorship emerges. Practically speaking, attending to the ways that social-psychological factors influence the well-being of STEM doctoral students points to important ways that faculty PIs and institutional leaders can fine-tune their policy making and (re)shape the values permeating their lab environments, student productivity, and how these features intersect with student mental health and well-being.

Unexpectedly, we found that membership in the more positive mental health and well-being profile was less likely for Ph.D. students who were highly productive in terms of scholarly productivity and for those who were highly confident in their research skills. While it might be assumed that individuals with better mental health are more resilient, confident, and productive, this assumption is not supported by the present data. Thus, it is possible that the pressures associated with sustaining high levels of productivity ultimately erode students’ well-being, even when they are successful in meeting expectations, and perhaps requires a shift in the ideology surrounding academic productivity and positive work environments. Accordingly, faculty mentors and administrators should not assume that simply because a student is demonstrating success in commonly valued metrics such as publication rate that the individual is thriving. Indeed, it may be that an important but neglected aspect of effective mentoring is to guide students to focus their productivity on fewer publications of greater impact. If consistent messaging to students about success as a researcher focuses predominantly on the quantity of publications, it would further explain the finding that students highly confident in their research abilities exhibit lower levels of well-being overall. While the ever-increasing pressure to publish is a normative element of the academy, it may be that endorsing or permitting it to increase unchecked will undermine the scientific enterprise in the long run by harming the very workforce that doctoral education seeks to train as the next generation of scientists.

While the association of these variables with the differential likelihood of being in one of the two latent profiles identified cannot be interpreted as causal in the current study, it can inform the direction of future research intended to foster effective interventions. Future research should ascertain to what extent the findings presented are unidirectional or reciprocal over the course of graduate education. It is additionally important for future research to examine potential differences among mental health and mental well-being, which were not differentiated nor should be interpreted separately in the present study. In addition, it will be important for future research to investigate different possible interventions targeting sense of belonging, mentoring relationships, and perceptions of academic development—constructs central to socialization—as a means of supporting doctoral students’ mental health and well-being. Findings from such work could provide evidence about the function of mental well-being as it manifests during graduate education and identify social factors that can mitigate negative mental well-being and promote positive mental well-being.

Funding Statement

This material is based upon work supported under National Science Foundation ( https://www.nsf.gov/ ) Awards 1431234(DF) and 1760894(DF). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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•       Resources       Mental Health in Grad School

Mental Health in Grad School Recognizing, Understanding & Overcoming Mental Health Issues in Grad School

Graduate school is tough. Not only is the curriculum challenging, but grad students often have other obligations, such as full- or part-time work or a family to raise. Add in a few other worries, like paying off those student loans, and it’s no surprise that tensions run high.

Reports of mental illness among grad school students is rising, and quickly. This guide will cover common mental health concerns for grad students, expert advice on where to find help, and more. Let’s take a look at what every grad student needs to know about their mental health.

Is Graduate School Taking a Toll on My Mental Health?

Understanding common mental health issues for graduate students, how to navigate & receive accommodations in graduate school, mental wellness strategies & support for graduate students, ashleigh ostermann: my experience with depression and anxiety in grad school.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know the answer to that question. But it can be helpful to look at a few questions that help gauge just how serious a mental health issue might be. This self-assessment is a good way to get honest with yourself about how grad school might be affecting your mental health.

• School often feels overwhelming, but lately, so does life in general.
• My sleeping habits have changed – I’m sleeping too much, or I’m not sleeping enough.
• I’ve lost interest in doing things I used to enjoy. It’s safe to say I sometimes feel empty.
• Sometimes I feel like a fraud. I keep waiting for everyone else to see how worthless I am.
• I worry so much that sometimes those worries take over my life.
• Friends and family have noticed concerning changes in me.
• Self-doubt has been overwhelming me since I started grad school.
• Sometimes I’m on a “high” and can’t slow down; other times I’m so depressed that I don’t want to get out of bed.
• I turn to alcohol or drugs more and more often these days.
• I find myself staying up way too late to work on assignments and then worrying that I didn’t spend enough time on them.

If you DISAGREE with most of these statements…

We’re glad you feel good! Even if you disagree with most of these statements, it’s always good to keep tabs on your well-being. Continue reading to learn what you can do to keep yourself mentally healthy.

If you AGREE with most of these statements…

You could be facing the challenges of mental illness. Keep reading to learn more about what you can do to find the proper help and treatment, so you can feel like yourself again.

Mental health in general is not something that we should blame people for, or just expect them to get over it. If someone says they have anxiety or depression, or any other mental health issue, it's not because they aren't trying their best, or they're "choosing" to feel that way.

Though every student is different and the mental health challenges they might face will be quite different as well, some mental health difficulties tend to show up more often among grad students. It’s important to know what to look out for so that it becomes easier to recognize the symptoms and get help.

A Look at Graduate Mental Health & Why It Matters

Wondering why graduate mental health matters so much? Let’s take a look at the numbers.

of counseling center directors believe the availability of psychiatric resources on campus is inadequate to meet student needs. American Psychological Association

Graduate student’s risk of anxiety and depression is more than six times higher than that of the general public. Among graduate students who reported suffering from depression or anxiety, more than 55 percent also reported an unhealthy work-life balance. Inside Higher Ed

of Ph.D. students are at risk of developing depression or another common psychiatric condition. Research Policy

Between 2010 and 2016, the number of students seeking mental health services has steadily increased, as has the rate of hospitalizations and suicide attempts. Penn State Center for Collegiate Mental Health

It’s okay to not be okay. It’s not okay to struggle alone. Speaking up and reaching out helps to break the stigma of mental health being negative.

Addiction & Substance Use Disorders

It isn’t unusual for a college student to try new things. But it’s important to note that for some, addiction and substance abuse problems can be lurking in the wings, waiting to take hold. Those in the grip of addiction will continue reaching for the addictive substance, even as it causes more and more problems in their lives. Those in college are more likely to drink and abuse substances. Graduate students, in particular, are more likely to use prescription stimulants – about 15 percent of grad students reported using stimulants improperly during their lifetime, with 67 percent of users turning to them for an academic boost.

Much more than a fleeting moment of sadness, depression is one of the most prevalent disorders. Those who suffer from it might seem perfectly fine to anyone else, but inside, they are struggling. The symptoms of depression include feelings of sadness or emptiness, losing pleasure in hobbies and time spent with friends, and prolonged trouble with eating or sleeping. It is thought to be triggered by a combination of genetic, biologic, environmental and psychological factors. Estimates say about 36 percent of all college students and 39 percent of graduate students suffer from depression.

When mental health disorders begin, unfortunately, some might consider harming themselves. A study of more than 300 graduate students at Emory University found that over 7 percent of them had suicidal thoughts. It’s important to remember that there is always someone ready and willing to listen and help you find the assistance you need.

If you are contemplating suicide, please drop everything right now and get help. Dial 911, call the crisis center at your college or university, or turn to the Lifeline at 800-273-TALK(8255). There are many people who want to help you, no matter what you’re going through, and they are available right now – all you have to do is pick up the phone.

Sleeping Issues & Disorders

Though many college students often choose to go without sleep, those with insomnia and other sleeping disorders might have no choice in the matter. Insomnia is likely the most commonly known sleeping disorder, but there are several others, such as narcolepsy, sleepwalking or restless leg syndrome. Studies have found that 27 percent of college students suffer from various sleeping disorders and those students had lower GPAs that put them at risk for academic failure. Sleep disorders are often accompanied by other psychiatric issues , so students might find that one exacerbates the other.

Stress & Anxiety Disorders

When in college, having some level of stress and anxiety is a given. But when those issues begin to take over a person’s life, it might be more than just worry about the next test. Those with stress and anxiety disorders suffer from worries that don’t get better with time. They might feel constantly on edge, have trouble sleeping, suffer from fatigue, find it impossible to concentrate and feel tense and irritable. Some might even suffer from panic attacks or social anxiety. Anxiety is the most prevalent mental health issue among college students, with over 41 percent seeking help for the condition.

Sara Stanizai: Why Graduate Students are At-Risk for Mental Health Concerns

Sara Stanizai is a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, a Diplomate of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, and the owner of Prospect Therapy , an LGBTQ+ affirming practice in Long Beach, California, focused on serving high-achievers and first-generation Americans as they manage expectations of their families and themselves.

There is lots of research that says graduate students now more than ever are experiencing mental health issues. That could mean more graduate students are reporting mental health issues, and/or seeking help for those issues.

There could be many things causing this:

• More visibility and less stigma of seeking treatment.
• Recognizing mental health issues and calling them what they are. 
• Understanding that they are a serious concern that can be life threatening, and not just "someone not trying hard enough." 
• An increase in exposure to stress related to personal, local, and world events. We're more inundated with information now, and much of it is stressful!
• We're up all night on our phones reading about events within our social circles, but also about national and world events.
• Comparing ourselves to others on social media, where people can curate the "greatest hits" of their lives.

The same pressure that earlier generations felt on the need for a college degree, now younger generations are feeling regarding graduate school. College was a place to "find yourself" and explore your interests, but graduate school is more focused and there is more pressure. Additionally, graduate students are not living in a dorm and maybe working on the weekend. Graduate students have families, jobs, and more responsibilities, so there is more pressure on them.

Start to pay attention to your own habits, and those of your friends and colleagues. A balanced lifestyle, even for a busy student, involves some amount of self-care and scheduled down time. If you're not able to find time to take care of yourself, or if you find the time but when the time comes you skip the self-care and anxiety makes you fixate on your research, you might be experiencing a serious problem. 

People sometimes skip meals or social events because "they'll feel better if they just finish this assignment." But when they finish the assignment, they don't actually feel better! Unrealistic expectations or comparing yourself to others can contribute to depression and anxiety.

If you notice changes in your mood, if you struggle to identify or rely on a support system, or you find that you are using something to "escape" more and more frequently - video games, social media, alcohol or drugs - you might be on the path to a mental illness.

As a private practice clinician, I partner with many local college and university campuses, and know that they employ and refer out to high quality providers. 

In many cases, students can expect an experience very similar to going to any other provider. Any counselor or therapist anywhere is bound by state and federal privacy laws regarding confidentiality of your treatment, so the concern about going on campus vs. going to a private practice across town isn't necessary. The on-campus provider is just as confidential as anyone else you might go to.

Students can save on the cost of seeing a therapist, as campus-sponsored counseling centers offer services for no cost or low cost. The quality of clinicians is generally quite good, whether the counselors are licensed or pre-licensed. The nice thing about pre-licensed clinicians is that they get regular supervision each week, so you can be sure you are getting high quality care.

When you need accommodations to help you get through grad school, the law is on your side. State-funded institutions are usually required to provide reasonable accommodations or adjustments for students with disabilities, including mental illnesses. This falls under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 . It’s vitally important to understand your rights, as well as your responsibilities. Keep reading to learn more about potential accommodations for you while in grad school.

Mental Health Accommodation Examples for Graduate Students

Sometimes a simple accommodation can mean the difference between a good school experience and a bad one. These reasonable accommodations and modifications can make life much easier for graduate students.

During difficult periods, some students might benefit from reducing their course load. Many schools will be amenable to this, especially since graduate programs often have a window of completion; for instance, a doctoral candidate might be allowed to take up to seven years to complete the work.

Some programs will require hands-on work, such as master’s programs that require a certain number of supervised hours to earn the degree. Students who are struggling with the workload required by these programs might be able to receive an accommodation that allows them to spread out the required hours.

If short deadlines lead to crippling anxiety, students might be able to get more flexible deadlines that allow them adequate time to plan and coordinate their schedule. However, students should expect that even extended deadlines are reasonable enough that they are still learning at roughly the same pace as their classmates.

While tutoring is often available to all students, this accommodation can allow for even more hours with a tutor. This can reduce anxiety, alleviate stress and potentially even help a student avoid triggers that could make existing mental illnesses worse.

A strong mentor can help grad students see their studies through, and can also give them a boost regarding networking, post-graduate plans and job opportunities. These mentors can often help ground the grad student when they are feeling overwhelmed.

Requesting private space and time to take a test, give a presentation or otherwise complete an assignment can make life easier for those who suffer from anxiety or other serious mental illnesses.

Requesting Mental Health Academic Accommodations in Grad School

Students deserve the opportunity for reasonable accommodations – and the law recognizes that. But how should someone go about getting the accommodations they need? Here’s a brief step-by-step guide to help get the process started.

Some accommodations will come naturally, such as taking the online version of a course or using the extended completion time to finish a degree. If there are some accommodations that need extra input and attention from the school, those are the ones you should target.

Though they might go by a variety of names, each institution should have an office dedicated to providing accommodations for those with disabilities, including mental health challenges. You can find this office and the proper contact person by asking the student health center or admissions office.

In order to receive accommodations, students are often required to prove must prove they have of a mental illness necessitating the accommodation. The disability resource center can tell you exactly what documentation you must provide. An in-depth application might also be required.

Though schools will try their best to honor your request for accommodations, sometimes you will have to meet them halfway – for instance, if you ask for an accommodation that the school can’t provide due to the nature of the program you’re in, they might offer a different accommodation that could work just as well. Be open to the possibilities.

If it appears that an accommodation just isn’t going to work after you’ve tried it for a few weeks or months, get in touch with the disability resource center and let them know. They will work with you to find a better solution.

There is a misconception of what depression looks like. I have a bubbly personality, am educated and look like I have my life together.

Finding the right support system and wellness strategies is vitally important for anyone facing mental health issues. Luckily, there are a plenty of options, both on and off campus, to help graduate students stay as healthy as possible.

8 Wellness Strategies for Graduate Students

Creating strategies for good mental health can make getting through grad school much easier. Here are some tips.

“It doesn't have to be daily, but it should be a pattern of self-care that creates some relief in your week or month,” Stanizai said. “Make sure you treat self-care, socializing, rest, and hobbies just as you do homework assignments and class time. You can't have one without the other!”

Your physical health has a direct impact on your mental health. Get plenty of exercise, eat healthy foods, lay off the caffeine and avoid drugs and alcohol. Make a point of getting physicals every year, and don’t hesitate to go to the doctor when something seems amiss.

“Sometimes we don't realize how nervous or withdrawn we are until it's been a few weeks or months. If you can routinely check in with your mood and energy levels, you can notice small changes much earlier, before they become big changes,” Stanizai said. She suggests keeping a journal, meeting regularly with friends and practicing meditation as good ways of keeping tabs on your mental health.

Sometimes the terrible things happening in the world take center stage, and that can wear down even the most mentally-healthy person. There is no shame in taking an extended break from social media when the news becomes too much to handle.

Those who know you outside of academics can offer a unique perspective. “They will be the best to tell you if you don't seem like yourself,” Stanizai said. “Others who are in the same grind as you may not notice, or may even have their own issues clouding their judgment.”

Getting help academically can lessen the mental toll taken by grad school. Furthermore, reaching out for help with mental illness can have a positive effect on your academics. Bottom line: Getting help when you need it is a win-win situation.

If you are prescribed medication to help with mental health issues, take it as directed. Never stop taking a medication simply because you feel better and wonder if you still need it – you likely feel better because of the medication, not in spite of it. If a medication isn’t working for you, tell your physician as soon as possible.

“It's not a sustainable lifestyle,” Stanizai pointed out. “Just ask any grad student in their last year of their program! Recognizing that it's a limited period of time can help put things in perspective.”

On-Campus Resources

Most schools have a student health center; from there, you can find counseling and mental health centers that are ready to assist you. If you’re not sure where to find them, start with the admissions office.

Each school should have a center or department with the sole purpose of meeting the needs of students with a variety of disabilities, including mental illnesses. These centers provide students with the information they need to make informed decisions about their education, accommodations, special adjustments and more.

Many schools have advocacy groups for students with a variety of issues. Look for one that offers help for those with mental illness. You can usually find a good lead through the campus counseling service, student health center or disability resource center. If there isn’t an advocacy group on your campus, consider starting one, such as creating a chapter of Active Minds .

From those who suffer from serious mental illness to those who need an occasional boost in mood, there is probably a support group for them. Check out the National Alliance on Mental Illness for a comprehensive list of support groups and clubs available on campuses across the nation.

Off-Campus Resources

There are numerous online communities and resources for those suffering from mental illness. Some of them, like the National Grad Crisis Line , focus on graduate students. Others, like Mental Health America , are more general but provide active message boards and other ways to connect with individuals going through the same challenges.

There are thousands of apps available that focus on everything from connecting students with mental health resources to self-guided assistance through panic attacks. Apps like Talkspace , Headspace and AnxietyCoach are great places to begin.

Locating care providers for mental illness can be tough, especially if a student lives far away from a large metro area, as is often the case for online students. Try the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to find a provider near you.

Those seeking a support group in their local community can ask their physician or counselor about the various options available. Students can also find a community support group through Mental Health America , which provides a comprehensive list of support groups that focus on certain issues.

The best strategy is a preventative strategy. Burn out is much harder to recover from if you're already there. It's much easier to prevent ahead of time than to recover from it after the fact.

Ashleigh Ostermann is from St. Petersburg, Florida and currently resides in Orlando. She is the marketing manager for Schoolhaus, a communications agency. Ashleigh is passionate about her clients as she continuously builds relationships with each and every one of them to develop their brand’s story and build strategic content marketing.

I have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anxiety. I believe it's been about 5 years since I started medication. I knew that something was wrong from a young age though, maybe 14 years old and just dealt with it internally. I called it ‘white knuckling’ because I would just push through to still get good grades in college, and at least look like I was okay. Anyways, back to graduate school. I started in January 2015 and earned a Master of Arts in Mass Communication (MAMC) with a specialization in Social Media from the University of Florida in August 2017.

During that time I was working full-time, dealing with a breakup with someone I was with for over eight years and was committed to maintaining a 4.0 GPA. Talk about triggers, right? But the good thing was that I was aware of my mental illness and that I had to take the steps to be proactive about handling it. 

It wasn't easy. I repeat, not easy, but I found a medication combo that works for me, I reached out to friends and family when I was fighting a depressive episode and I would go to counseling, as needed. I did also do a little of the ‘grin and bear it’ when needed.

I found resources such as in-person counseling and smartphone applications to be helpful for my mental health. I think that it’s really important to find a counselor that you click with, as I had tried a few in the past that I just didn’t feel like I could openly talk to. Being open and upfront (not being afraid of being vulnerable) with your counselor is key. Otherwise, they won’t know how to help you.

With that said, mental illness is isolating. I felt embarrassed at times, ashamed even, that I was battling such dark things. On the outside, I looked cheery, bubbly and happy, yet I wasn’t feeling that way on the inside. Using mobile applications helped me connect with others going through similar situations and let me know that I wasn’t alone.

Absolutely there were times where I thought I couldn’t continue grad school. Those negative thoughts that I didn’t deserve to be furthering my education, that I wasn’t good enough or smart enough, times where I just didn’t have any emotion towards anything and the thought of “why am I even doing this” came up.

Ways I pushed through these moments was to let myself feel how I felt and then once it wasn’t as bad, think through why I was in grad school, what I was gaining from it. I also journaled through a personal blog . Writing out – unfiltered – of what I was experiencing and feeling helped me a lot. Looking back on different posts where I was battling a depressive episode, I see how far I’ve come and that while I have low points in my life, I also have high points.

Take it one step at a time and find out what works for you. If you know that you’re proactive and are able to speak up when you need help, then rely on your support system. If you know that you internalize and it’s hard to speak up, look for an app or resource that you like and feel comfortable with and try it out. That way there’s no extra pressure of doing something you’re uncomfortable with when you’re already struggling.

Mental health is just as important as physical health. If a student was physically injured and it interrupted their studies, you wouldn’t say to get over it. You would work with the student to find a solution for the problem or obstacle. I strongly feel that this should be the same as if a student comes to a school with mental health struggles. It’s not an excuse, just something to work out.

The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Mental Health in Higher Education

• Posted April 1, 2024
• By Ryan Nagelhout
• Career and Lifelong Learning
• Counseling and Mental Health
• Higher Education Leadership
• Student Achievement and Outcomes

As mental health remains a crucial and evolving aspect of teaching students across all levels of education, Professional Education at HGSE has developed programming to help educators evaluate the institutional supports and programs behind caring for student mental health.

One of those programs, Mental Health in Higher Education: A Theory-to-Practice Approach for Student Well-Being , aims to confront the complex challenge managing student mental health presents in higher education. Led by Lecturer Alexis Redding , the four-week virtual institute features a theory-grounded approach to mental health topics in an effort to provide educators clarity around the wide variety of mental health challenges seen in student populations.

“One of the principles of our program is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to the college mental health crisis,” says Redding, faculty co-chair of HGSE’s higher education concentration. “Instead, we will give our participants the opportunity to learn from experts in the field who each offer a set of key questions to consider as they craft a tailored solution to meet the need at their home institution.”

Redding explained one of the goals of the curriculum is to bring “a new approach to thinking about student well-being” by using experts across a variety of educational disciplines. Rather than present a uniform set of solutions, the programming offers “a set of key questions to consider” that will help educators find solutions that match their own culture, existing programming, and resources available.

The program features a long list of education experts, including HGSE faculty such as Senior Lecturer Richard Weissbourd , director of Making Caring Common, and Emily Weinstein , executive director and co-founder of the Center for Digital Thriving. Other guests providing insight for the program include the Jed Foundation Chief Medical Officer Laura Erickson-Schroth, faculty director of Boston University’s Newbury Center Anthony Jack and Ball State professor and author Amanda Latz.

“When you look at our faculty, every person has an entirely different vantage point on student mental health and will help us consider a different aspect of the student journey,” Redding says. “We will follow the arc of what students experience from before they even get to college through the job search and graduation. Along the way, we will think critically about the issue of belonging on campus, basic needs security, and students who have been traditionally underserved.”

The vast perspectives considered, and mental health factors explored, allow participants to go beyond the numbers and data to gain new insights and avoid the “hidden curriculum” — assumptions of common knowledge about mental health that can create barriers between educators and student needs.

“This approach will allow them to create solutions that fit their institutional culture, existing programming, and the availability of resources,” Redding said. “Every participant will leave the program with a concrete set of questions to ask related to each of our topics, resources to use, and models of practice that they can consider for inspiration.”

Registration for Mental Health in Higher Education closes on April 10.

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Going into graduate studies can be an exciting time, but also a stressful one for students.

New research from Wilfrid Laurier University has looked at how that experience differs from domestic students compared to international students, and it found international graduate students are less likely to access mental health services.

An article by assistant professor of education Kathleen Clarke was recently published in the Journal of International Students. She joined CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition to speak with host Craig Norris about what the data showed her.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. The audio of the interview is at the bottom of this article.

Craig Norris: Why did you want to do this research? 

Kathleen Clarke: My work looks at graduate students and different student groups like international students. 

We know that grad school is different than the undergrad experience because students are dealing with faculty advisers, independent research. If we know that international students face these different sources of stress, I kind of wondered, will this also be true at the graduate level and that brought me to doing this work.

Norris: What exactly did you find?

Clarke: Two key things. One is that international graduate students actually experience similar sources of stress to domestic students, like financial issues, academics. 

The main difference was with stress related to careers, whether they would stay in Canada or not, whether they would get a job once they're done. 

The second piece is around help seeking. So international graduate students were likely to underutilize counselling services on campus and that could be for a variety of reasons, like lack of awareness of services, language barriers or lack of culturally relevant services.

Norris: Did your research give you a sense of what in particular was stressing students out? I know you mentioned the careers part there for international students.

Clarke: The career-related issues were the main source of stress for international students, but for international and domestic students, they experienced financial stress, issues related to their academics and finishing their degrees and then other things like relationship issues, financial and other types of things like that.

Norris: Who do you think this research is for?

Clarke: I think, especially right now because of the new international stream cap, with the cap on the number of international students, that this is going to become perhaps even more important, largely because the cap doesn't apply to graduate students. 

So we might actually see more international graduate students coming in so that institutions can make up some of that difference in terms of finances. 

That means that this research is going to be really important because it highlights that the experiences, the sources of stress and the help seeking behaviours are slightly different with international students than domestic students.

Norris: What do you think can be done to better address the mental health needs of international grad students?

Clarke: A really important part is especially related to the career stress is services in different areas on campus, really highlighting that their services are for different student groups.

Not all services are going to be applicable or relevant or specific enough for different STEAM [science, technology, engineer, arts and math] groups. 

So really tailoring the support for graduate students, for international students is going to be important and in terms of using counselling, making sure that students are aware of services and that those services are culturally relevant and appropriate.

Norris: What's next when it comes to your research into this?

Clarke: I think that there's different sources of data that we can continue to use and talking to different institutions to see how they're responding to international graduate students' mental health at the undergrad and graduate level is likely the next direction.

LISTEN | International grad students less likely to access mental health services, Laurier research finds :

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'A force for good': Students prepare to be the next generation of mental health professionals

Content warning:  This article contains mentions of suicide and mental health issues.

Ever since middle school, Julia Bondareva has noticed that they, along with the people around them, have faced challenges with their mental health, especially anxiety and depression. 

Now a UNC junior studying neuroscience and psychology, Bondareva is among the students currently working to become the next generation of mental health professionals and researchers.

As they grew up, they realized there was a larger issue, especially impacting people their age, which inspired them to look into the mental health field. When they took a psychology class in high school, they realized that this was the field they wanted to pursue. The class was the most interesting subject they had learned about yet, and Bondareva said they fell in love with how the subject facilitated human connection in a variety of ways. 

Younger generations uniquely struggle with mounting academic and social pressure, Bondareva said, which can exacerbate existing conditions or genetic predispositions for mental illness.

“I think that pressure really makes or breaks people,” they said. “Seeing that firsthand, in a lot of my friends and myself, first inspired me to be like, 'There's a problem and I need to learn more about it because this is not going to go away.'”

In a 2022 study published by the National Library of Medicine, researchers found that young adults aged 18-25 years old had increased anxiety and/or depression symptoms from before the COVID-19 pandemic. In total , 48 percent of the young adults surveyed had mental health symptoms, 39 percent of which received treatment with 36 percent reporting unmet counseling needs. 

Regular stressors, such as poverty or academic pressure, are worsened by unique issues — such as the recent rise in social media use and isolation as a product of the pandemic — young adults have faced in their formative years. UNC s enior  and UNC  Chapter President of Helping Give Away Psychological Science   Aidan Spelbring has seen this firsthand throughout his work and collegiate experience at UNC. 

Spelbring , who studies psychology and   conflict management at the University, said he decided to step into the field of psychology because of a mixture of personal experiences and environmental factors.  

When he was a sophomore in 2021, at least three students died by suicide in the fall semester. Spelbring said he was deeply impacted by the idea that people in UNC’s community were seriously struggling.  

“I knew that I wanted to be a force for good and trying to combat that for people,” he said. 

While every student has their own reason for entering the mental health field, Spelbring said most students who pursue health service professions have been impacted in some way or another by the issues they are trying to work against.

20 years ago in 2004, 918 were enrolled in UNC's psychology and neuroscience program as of the tenth day of the fall semester, while clinical mental health counseling master’s degree didn't exist, according to UNC's Office of Institutional Research and Assessment . 

Last year,  1,534 students were enrolled in the University’s psychology and neuroscience program  as of the tenth day and 24 in the clinical mental health counseling master’s degree program, showing an increase in student interest over the past two decades.

UNC senior Cameron Thomas is studying psychology, conflict management and cognitive science, and fell in love with the field in high school. Thomas said he thinks about mental health like an annoying roommate — while they're always there, the way you interact with them can change everything. 

"I'm able to organize the chaos that’s in my head and, ultimately, I feel better at the end of the day after sorting some of it out," he said.

The more students talk about and interact with mental health, the less stigmatized it becomes, Thomas said. At least at UNC, he thinks that a lot of young people are passionate about being a part of the solution, both in and out of the classroom.   

"I think people are definitely more engaged with the topic because I think it relates to everybody's lives," Bondareva said. "As time goes by, it's a growing field. We learn more techniques, we learn more about how to improve other people's lives."

Bondareva said even though people can get tired of hearing about mental health, it’s still important to learn about. They believe that there will be a point in most people’s lives where they will need to reach out for help and when that time comes, that people need to know how to take care of themselves more.

"Don't go through it alone, don't try to bottle it up, it's probably going to find you anyway," Spelbring said. "So, deal with it, talk to someone and do things that make you happy."

@l_rhodsie  

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Lauren Rhodes is the 2024 university editor at The Daily Tar Heel. She has previously served as an assistant editor and senior writer for the university desk. Lauren is a sophomore pursuing a double major in media and journalism and political science with a minor in politics, philosophy and economics. 

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Field Placements

All students in the MA in Mental Health Counseling program build clinical competency skills through a 100-hour practicum and a 900-hour internship experience at local hospitals, agencies and organizations in the New York area.

The practicum begins at the end of the first academic year. Once completed, students transition into the internship for the remaining 900 hours of clinical practice. Students complete a total of 1000 hours, of which 400 are direct client contact hours. This satisfies the NYS requirements for clinical hours for the master’s degree.

Field placements provide students with excellent clinical supervision in the practice of counseling, assessment, and evaluation, as well as specific treatments for a variety of mental health issues. Placements offer experience working in a variety of clinical settings, including inpatient/outpatient hospital-based programs, private practices, rehabilitation programs, school-based mental health programs, and organizations.

Here is a short list of sites that have shared in the training of many of our clinical interns:

• Alverta B. Gray Schultz Middle School
• Counseling Service of Eastern District New York (CSEDNY)
• Manhattan Psychology Group
• Mercy Medical Center
• Mount Sinai Hospital
• North Shore Child and Family Guidance
• Northwell Health Zucker Hillside
• Queens Long Island Community Services
• The Safe Center LI
• Samaritan Daytop Village
• Suffolk Outpatient Treatment Program
• Seafield Services
• South Oaks Hospital

Our students have gained valuable experience outside the classroom, through graduate student  assistantships  and  field placement opportunities , conference and presentation participation.

Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology

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• Open access
• Published: 22 December 2022

Doctoral researchers’ mental health and PhD training satisfaction during the German COVID-19 lockdown: results from an international research sample

• Sandra Naumann   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8992-2930 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Magdalena Matyjek   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4546-6480 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Katharina Bögl 1 , 2   na1 &
• Isabel Dziobek 1 , 2  

Scientific Reports volume  12 , Article number:  22176 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Academia has been facing a mental health crisis particularly affecting early career researchers (ECRs). Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic posed an unprecedented burden on the mental health of many individuals. Therefore, we cross-sectionally investigated how doctoral researchers (N = 222) evaluate their mental health status and satisfaction with their PhD training before and during the pandemic. As compared to self-reported, retrospective evaluations about the pre-pandemic state, we found decreased satisfaction with PhD training and overall well-being. The whole sample exhibited high levels of personal and work-related burnout, a fifth indicated clinically meaningful levels of depressive symptoms and almost 25% experienced severe loneliness. When exploring predictors of depression, anxiety, and burnout, we identified low satisfaction with PhD training as the most prominent predictor for poor mental health, suggesting a link between the doctoral work and their mental health status. Females vs. males and doctoral researchers in individual doctorate vs. structured PhD programs reported higher symptoms of burnout. Our study replicates previous findings of poor mental health in doctoral researchers and indicates further decreases of mental wellbeing under the influence of the pandemic. Systematic adjustments in academia are required to improve the mental health of ECRs.

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Introduction

Although many academics indicate to love research and to experience fulfilment from various tasks which belong to their profession 1 , mounting evidence suggests that working in academia might contribute to mental health problems 2 , 3 . Early career researchers (ECRs), i.e., doctoral and early postdoctoral researchers, have been found to be at risk for mental disorders with prevalence rates up to 24% for depression and 17% for anxiety 4 . These levels are up to three times higher as compared to the prevalences in the general population 5 , 6 . Consequently, it has been suggested that academia faces a “mental health crisis” 2 , sparking a discussion of its causes and possible remedies.

Among the main stressors for ECRs are the unpredictable length of the PhD training, financial instability, and high competitiveness for subsequent academic jobs 4 . Further, the prevailing ‘publish or perish’ culture pressures academics to put quantity over quality in their scientific work 7 , increasing stress and work dissatisfaction. Poorer work-life balance and higher conflict between work responsibilities are also linked to higher burnout rates in ECRs 8 . Other, not directly work-related, factors such as feelings of loneliness 5 also have been shown to negatively affect their mental health.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health worsened in the general population with elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and feelings of loneliness 9 , 10 . First studies indicate that ECRs' mental health was also negatively affected 10 . Pandemic-related changes imposed additional major stressors on ECRs 11 : Empirical work, which involved interactions with participants, had to be terminated for longer periods of time causing unforeseeable delays in PhD projects 12 . Social distancing forced researchers to stay at home, isolated from their support networks of colleagues. This might have been especially challenging for first year doctoral researchers and international doctoral researchers, who were disconnected from previous social networks and had limited chances to establish new ones after their relocation. For ECRs with children and family care duties, personal responsibilities increased as kindergarten and eldercare facilities closed, which had a disproportionate impact on female scientists 13 .

Taken together, the pandemic accumulated many additional problems on ECRs 11 who were shown to be already at high risk for developing mental health problems due to the pressure and working conditions in the academic system 2 , 3 , 4 . So far, specific research on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ECRs’ mental health is scarce, however, and mostly limited to anecdotal evidence 14 . Therefore, we assessed the mental health status of a defined group of ECRs, particularly doctoral researchers, under the consideration of pandemic influences. Data were collected in Berlin, a central German research hub with numerous international research institutions. Given the international science context, we assumed that our results would be informative beyond national borders.

Firstly, we sought to assess the current mental health of doctoral researchers including existing clinical diagnoses of mental disorders, acute symptoms of common mental problems (i.e., depression, anxiety, burnout, loneliness), and support structures (e.g., strength of social network, individual coping strategies). In accordance with the literature 3 , 4 , we expected to find elevated rates for depression and anxiety symptoms in our sample. Secondly, we aimed to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctoral researchers’ mental health and satisfaction with the PhD training. During data collection (January and February 2021), the pandemic status had been officially declared for almost a year in Germany (starting in March 2020). By then, two waves of infection had been observed and a strict lockdown had been imposed on the public for almost two months, with restrictions on public life still effective at the time of data collection. We assumed that, given the additional stressors implied on research by the pandemic, satisfaction would decrease for various PhD-related aspects when comparing ratings of pre-pandemic times with the current, in-pandemic, situation. Further, we expected that many aspects related to the PhD training would contribute more to mental health problems in the pandemic, compared to how much they did before its onset. Thirdly, in an exploratory analysis, we investigated potential predictors of doctoral researchers’ depression, anxiety, and burnout symptoms. Given the exploratory nature of this procedure, hypotheses were more tentative: We assumed that higher PhD training satisfaction and integration into a structured graduate program would be associated with lower symptom scores.

Mental health status

Standardized questionnaires concerning mental health.

Table 1 includes an overview of the results for BSI, CBI, and De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale scores. Regarding the BSI, 21% of the sample exceeded the threshold for depression and 4% for anxiety. Means of the CBI subscales for personal burnout and work-related burnout were 49 and 47, the mean score in the CBI total scale was 48 (including only the personal and work-related burnout subscales). Both subscale scores were substantially higher than the means in the validation sample 15 . Regarding loneliness, 24% of the sample indicated to be severely or very severely lonely (scores 9 or higher).

Mental disorder manifestation, mental health problems, and expectations related to the PhD training

Participants were asked whether they had been diagnosed with a mental disorder before or after the start of their PhD training. As depicted in Fig.  1 , 16% of the respondents indicated that they received a mental disorder diagnosis before they started their PhD training. From this group, 49% stated that they were diagnosed with an additional mental disorder after the start of their doctorate. A majority of 84% indicated that they were not diagnosed with a mental disorder before. From this group, 13% indicated that they got diagnosed with a mental disorder after they started their PhD training. In total, 27% of doctoral researchers reported at least one clinically diagnosed mental disorder before or after the start of their PhD training.

Diagnosis of a mental disorder. The top chart shows proportions of participants diagnosed with a mental disorder or not prior to the beginning of the PhD training (1 person preferred not to answer this question; in grey). Separately for those who answered yes and no, bottom charts show proportions of participants further diagnosed and not diagnosed with a mental disorder during their PhD training. Please note: One person preferred not to answer.

As shown in Fig.  2 , the majority of doctoral researchers stated that their current mental health problems were at least partially related to their PhD training (51%), whereas only 17% reported to have no mental health problems. 62% of the responders indicated that their PhD training is a little or much worse than they imagined before they started it (see Fig.  3 ).

Mental health problems in relation to the PhD training. Participants were asked whether they think that their current mental health problems are related to their PhD training.

Expectations of the PhD training. Participants were asked whether their PhD training is how they had imagined it, better, or worse. Answers including “slightly” and “much” for both “worse” and “better” were collapsed.

Support structures

Only 16% of respondents expressed no interest in receiving psychological support. In contrast, 40% of doctoral researchers endorsed the answer “Yes, I would like it (or I am receiving some)” and 39% “Yes, I would like it, but I don’t need it now”. The forms of support rated as of most interest were psychotherapy in person (62%), psychological counselling (52%), and psychotherapy online (40%). Further, respondents stated that the coping strategies they use the most comprise social engagements (indicated by 85%) and recreational activities (78%; multiple answers were possible). To further delineate the role of social engagements, we asked participants to rate the strength of their overall social network ( M  = 73; SD  = 23) and the strength of their social network in Berlin ( M  = 53; SD  = 31). Further information on the forms of support as well as coping strategies are provided in the supplementary material (see the HTML file on the OSF page).

Changes in PhD training satisfaction and mental health during the pandemic

As shown in Fig.  4 , 43% of the respondents indicated that they were satisfied with their PhD training before the pandemic started, whereas only 32% stated that they were satisfied with it currently, in pandemic times. Evaluating the pre-pandemic situation, 38% of the sample indicated that they were dissatisfied, which increased to 46% after the start of the pandemic. Regarding the perceived change in wellbeing before and in the pandemic (see Fig.  5 ), 76% indicated that their mental wellbeing worsened during the pandemic.

Overall satisfaction with the PhD training before and during the pandemic. Answers including “very” and “somewhat” for both “satisfied” and “dissatisfied” were collapsed.

Mental wellbeing in the pandemic relative to pre-pandemic. Answers including “significantly” and “slightly” for both “worse” and “better” were collapsed.

As shown in Fig.  6 A, respondents evaluated their satisfaction with PhD-related aspects generally lower after than before the onset of the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, doctoral researchers were descriptively most satisfied with their research topic, working conditions, and holidays (all items rated at around 75%). We found the lowest satisfaction ratings for career perspectives, work-life balance, and academic results (the lowest at 50%). In pandemic times, research topic, salary, and holidays were rated highest (highest averaged rating at 68%); work-life balance, career perspectives, and work environment were rated the lowest (the lowest at 43%). We found significant decreases in the pandemic in self-rated satisfaction from workload, work environment, working conditions, work-life balance, supervision, research topic, career perspectives, and holidays, (all ps  < 0.01). The satisfaction from academic results and salary did not change significantly during the pandemic.

Average ratings of satisfaction with PhD-related aspects and of aspects contributing to mental health problems pre- and post-pandemic onset. The asterisks mark items for which t-tests reached statistical significance ( p  < 0.05, uncorrected).

Participants also rated how these aforementioned aspects contributed to their mental health problems before and after the beginning of the pandemic (see Fig.  6 B). Descriptively, the aspects that contributed most to mental health issues pre-pandemic were academic results, supervision, work-life balance, and workload. In pandemic times, the major contributor was work-life balance, followed by workload, supervision, and career perspectives. We observed significant increases for the ratings of career perspectives ( p  = 0.002), work-life balance ( p  < 0.001), relationships outside of work ( p  = 0.003), and holidays ( p  = 0.043), indicating that in the pandemic these factors played a larger negative role for the mental health of doctoral researchers. Other aspects did not change during the pandemic (See OSF page for exact t-values).

Predictive value of PhD training variables for mental health problems

Figure  7 shows the effect sizes (Cohen’s partial f ) for the terms selected in the stepwise selection process for models predicting the depression, anxiety, and (work-related) burnout scores. Table 2 summarizes the models’ statistics and directions of the effects. Gender was significant in all models: While males tended to show higher values for anxiety and depression, being female was predictive of higher burnout scores. Years into PhD training was not significantly related to any outcome variable. PhD type (individual doctorate vs. structured program) was only predictive of burnout scores, with higher levels of burnout for the PhD researchers pursuing an individual doctorate compared to being in a structured program. Years spent in Germany, although showing significant main effects in all models, did not survive corrections for multiple comparisons. The diagnosis of a mental disorder (acquired before or during the PhD) was consistently predictive of all three mental health problems (i.e., higher scores of depression, anxiety, and burnout). Lower scores of depression and anxiety were predicted by strength of the overall social network, while higher self-efficacy was linked to lower burnout scores. The overall current satisfaction with the PhD training predicted lower scores for mental health problems in all models. In terms of PhD-related aspects, those of the ratings which reached significance were all linked to lower scores of mental health problems. In burnout, these predictors were: supervision, work-life balance, and holidays; in anxiety: work-life balance and career perspectives; in depression: work-life balance, career perspectives, and holidays.

Effect sizes (Cohen’s partial f ) in the exploratory models of depression, anxiety, and burnout. The asterisks mark predictors for which the main effects reached statistical significance ( p  < 0.05).

We examined different self-report measures capturing the mental health status of doctoral researchers of the wider Berlin area. Self-report ratings implied increased levels of depression, burnout, and loneliness, which further exacerbated under the pandemic influence. Critically, these problems were linked to the PhD training.

Under the magnifying glass: doctoral researchers’ mental health status

Firstly, we investigated the mental health status of doctoral researchers regarding pre-existing clinical and subclinical manifestations. In line with previous research 2 , 3 , 4 , our participants displayed severe mental health problems. One quarter of the sample indicated to have at least one diagnosed mental disorder. Doctoral researchers with a pre-existing diagnosis more often developed an additional mental disorder during the years of their PhD training and the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus our data suggests that negative mental health impacts seem to be magnified particularly for ECRs with pre-existing vulnerabilities. Comparable to previous findings, one fifth crossed the cut-off for clinically relevant depressive symptoms 16 . These numbers are higher than the depression prevalence in the general German population before (7.7% 6 ) and during the pandemic (14.3% 17 ). However, some studies which were conducted outside of Germany reported similarly elevated levels of depression in the general population within this time period 18 . Therefore, the increased depression levels in our sample might not just be attributable to the academic training but to the high mental burden caused by the pandemic itself. We also detected higher scores of burnout as compared to the general population 15 , paralleling recent findings presenting a three-fold increase of burnout in ECRs 11 . Alarmingly, the majority of the sample reporting mental health problems indicated that they were related to their PhD training. Moreover, most of our sample reported their PhD training experience to be worse than expected and that they would be interested in receiving psychological support.

Various PhD training-related aspects may underlie the reported mental health problems: Firstly, pursuing a doctorate constitutes a time of professional and personal growth 19 . ECRs need to master complex theoretical frameworks, develop expertise in research methodologies and make an original contribution to their field 20 . Additionally, establishing boundaries between work and other areas of life is challenging: Academics assume that pervasive commitment and profound concentration on the research subject are expected 21 . Increased workload may cause a neglect of physical health or personal relationships, leading to work-life imbalances 22 . Lastly, research facility structures which do not buffer the psychological and emotional costs of the PhD training may contribute to a deterioration of ECRs’ mental health 23 .

Changes in satisfaction with the PhD training during the COVID-19 pandemic

Secondly, we aimed to unravel potential changes in satisfaction with the PhD training under the influence of the pandemic (which started about a year before this survey). We compared respondents' retrospective evaluation of their satisfaction before the pandemic with their current satisfaction. Almost all ratings significantly dropped during the pandemic with the largest decreases for working conditions and work environment. The German government introduced regulations to enforce social distancing to contain the COVID-19 virus, which also led to the closing of research facilities. Thus, a likely explanation for our results is that the disrupted or discontinued work on doctoral projects increased uncertainty and dissatisfaction with the PhD training 24 . Additionally, the workload and time spent on work might have increased significantly during the pandemic 25 , which corroborates the reported levels of increased work-related burnout in our survey.

There were no changes in satisfaction regarding doctoral researchers’ salaries during the pandemic. In contrast to the general German population, ECRs were not affected by Germany-wide short-time working measures (i.e., temporary reduction in normal working hours and thus reduction in salary). Further, at the time of the survey, the first pandemic-related extensions of PhD contracts and scholarships were granted. However, given that many empirical projects were on hold, the time until completion of the PhD training might prolong beyond the period of the granted extensions, which could increase the burden of financial insecurity in the long run. Although this hypothesis cannot be tested with the current data, it should be considered in future studies.

Likewise, we did not detect significant changes in satisfaction with academic results before and during the pandemic. It is possible that because some aspects of academic life (i.e., attending conferences) were limited, doctoral researchers had more resources to focus on output related to their PhD projects. In that vein, research indicated that the number of journal paper submissions increased during the pandemic 26 . Notably, our sample consisted of doctoral researchers which were at least three months into their PhD training in mostly empirical scientific fields. Given that they had already collected data for PhD-project related publications, they might have rated their academic results not to be significantly impacted by the pandemic.

Greater satisfaction with the PhD training in general, and with work-life balance in particular, were important resilience factors for all depression, anxiety, and burnout. This finding is in line with previous studies, which indicated that higher job satisfaction was associated with lower prevalence rates of depression and burnout in the general population 27 . Other studies highlighted that employees, who are satisfied with their work, can transfer positive feelings to non-work related contexts, resulting in a positive relationship between job and life satisfaction 28 , as well as psychological and social wellbeing 27 . Thus, maintaining ECRs’ satisfaction with their PhD training seems to be an essential mechanism to prevent mental health problems.

Further, our data showed that decreased satisfaction with PhD supervision is linked to burnout. Although we have no detailed information on the nature of the supervision quality, support from supervisors and other members of the research facilities have previously been reported to be critical to doctoral researchers’ persistence and scientific outcomes 29 . Research showed that the quantity and quality of meetings with supervisors can impact ECRs’ satisfaction 30 . Quality supervision can be characterized as involving precise and timely feedback, frequent meetings that include open discussion about roles and responsibilities, a supportive and collegial relationship, and encouragement to maintain the flow of work throughout the PhD training 31 . One driver of supervision dissatisfaction could arise from misaligned interests of ECRs and their supervisors: While the latter might be more inclined to tune their interest towards the scientific community as a whole, they might lose sight of ECR’s individual needs 32 .

In addition, we found that satisfaction with career perspectives is an important predictor of anxiety and burnout. It was recently argued that being optimistic about career prospects might help to decrease levels of depression and anxiety about the future 33 . However, long- and short-term academic career perspectives are uncertain, which may degrade academia to an “alternative career” path. Missing career outlooks, in or outside of academia, amplify the mental burden of ECRs, leading to the levels of anxiety and burnout 34 . This factor might be even more pronounced in countries of the Global South, where—compared to the Global North—levels of inequality and labour informality are higher and research funding is more limited 35 .

Within our analysis, the strength of doctoral researchers' social network emerged as an important resilience factor for depression and anxiety. Indeed, there is substantial evidence that individuals with richer networks of active social relationships tend to be more satisfied and happier with their lives 36 . However, due to the demands of their PhD training, ECRs often report declines in social interactions 37 . Lack of social support has also been found to correspond with lower wellbeing and a higher prevalence of mental illness in ECRs 38 . Similarly, in the current study ECRs who pursued an individual doctorate were more likely to suffer from burnout than their peers in structured graduate programs. Within a structured PhD program, doctoral researchers are integrated in a framework with peers from the start of the training, whereas individual doctorates require ERCs to build their own scientific community.

Another resilience factor identified in our data was self-efficacy, with higher levels being linked to lower burnout scores. Self-efficacy is an important motivational factor for identity development of ECRs 39 , especially when it comes to the confidence in successfully performing research tasks 40 . It has been found to be significantly correlated with interest in research and the production of scholarly publications 41 . Conversely, ECRs with low levels of self-efficacy may be more likely to engage in self-handicapping (e.g., procrastination) to avoid being perceived as incompetent 42 .

Finally, men in our sample showed higher levels of depression and anxiety symptoms than women. This finding is at odds with the literature, where women have been reported to suffer more often from mental health problems than men both in the general population 6 and ECR samples 2 . Although this finding is difficult to interpret, previous research showed that men have lower participation rates in voluntary surveys 43 and engage more rarely in help-seeking behavior 44 . Thus, it seems possible that the data reflect the effects of our convenience sample: Men may have participated in our survey because they experienced mental health problems, which resulted in increased clinical symptoms in this group. Further, although our male participants reported higher levels of depression and anxiety, female participants reported higher burnout scores. As shown in previous studies during the pandemic, women were more likely to engage in housework, care and family 13 , which relates to physical and psychological fatigue and exhaustion 15 , but less so to depression.

Call to action

Our sample of doctoral researchers reported profound PhD training-related mental health problems, which worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, mostly single researchers or initiatives founded by ECRs (e.g., German ECR initiatives like N 2 , Scholar Minds) devote their mission to reduce harmful work conditions and the stigmatization of mental health matters in academia. However, sustainable preventive and interventional solutions aiming to improve ECRs’ mental health should be prioritized and addressed on different systemic levels, such as academic institutions and political initiatives, to ensure a healthy and supportive work environment. Combining our findings with recent literature, we have identified several factors to improve conditions for ECRs. These factors are not exclusively tied to improving the situation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic but relate to more general aspects of ECRs’ mental health:

Institutional mental health support

Firstly, psychological burden could be alleviated if the institutional culture of a research facility was more welcoming, inclusive, and understanding of ECRs’ backgrounds 20 . To this end, an open discourse about mental health problems is needed, which would also help to increase personal and public de-stigmatization of mental health problems still being present in academia 45 .

Secondly, institution-based psychological counseling should be the standard at every research institution for prevention and interventional needs. Especially for international ECRs who are not familiar with the local health care system, institution-based counselling could be a first low-level opportunity to de-escalate arising mental health problems. Although some counselling opportunities are already in place, ECRs are often unaware of their existence (e.g., no advertisement of services; information difficult to access 46 ). In addition, psychological counselling opportunities do not seem to be specifically tailored to doctoral researchers’ needs, but are rather similar to those designed for undergraduate students 47 . Thus, institutions would need to provide easily accessible PhD training-tailored psychological counselling.

Work-life balance

Working overtime and disregarding holidays is still part of the academic culture 48 . With an average of more than 46 h of work per week 16 , doctoral researchers contribute to the normalization of this culture, likely neglecting their work-life balance. When employed part time, doctoral researchers have been shown to work even more over-time hours than postdoctoral researchers (difference of up to 7 h per week 48 ). Irrespective of the type of working contract, the implicit rule to work overtime should be discouraged by employers and supervisors. Additionally, workshops on self- and time management provided by research institutions can strengthen ECRs’ ability to deal with the stressful demands of academia.

Quality of supervision

Mentoring contracts between ECRs and supervisors could help to set expectations for both parties. This procedure is already in place at many research facilities, however, it is yet to become a common practice. Further, improving supervision quality should be incentivized by research facilities. Whereas ratings of teaching are already a part of applications for professorships, a similar quantification for supervision skills could maintain supervision quality over the course of the PhD training. Integrated evaluations by doctoral researchers could both incentivize senior academics to monitor their quality of supervision and offer tangible rewards for their efforts.

Providing career perspectives and transferable skills

Even though staying in academia is still viewed as the most desirable career path for ECRs 49 , only a small percentage can continue to work in academia after the completion of their PhD training 50 . The creation of more permanent positions on a post-doctoral level is an important political challenge. In Germany, 98% of employees under 35 years of age are working on limited contracts in academia. Thanks to public attention on precarious working conditions in academia initiated by the German grass-root movement “#ichbinHanna” ( https://ichbinhanna.wordpress.com ) , first political consequences that will lead to the creation of more tenure track positions, have been taken. Furthermore, opportunities to continue a career outside of science should be considered more strongly. Although many structured PhD programs have started to integrate educational content on alternative career paths, more room should be given for concrete opportunities to develop new skills as, for example, in the form of internships or role plays 51 . As skills acquired during the PhD training can successfully be transferred to careers outside of academia 34 , these real-life experiences might decrease anxiety regarding future job perspectives.

Growing social networks

Research facilities play a major role in socializing ECRs 51 which is why an important task constitutes the establishment of sustainable ECR networks in research facilities to grow sustainable social networks to discuss science matters and work-related challenges. Some graduate schools already provide induction days and buddy programs (e.g., connecting doctoral researchers across different PhD cohorts) to facilitate ECRs’ future academic career. In addition, regular check-ins with members of the research facility could help to identify and solve problems with settling into the research institution and its social network structure.

Moreover, within- and between-institutional networks have the potential to help ECRs to shape their career paths. Some graduate schools are already providing alumni talks to connect ECRs with graduates from various career fields. This approach not only helps to expand the professional network, but also sharpens the view of which career options may be available after the doctorate and how to target these options early on.

Fostering self-efficacy

To maintain self-efficacy, the PhD training should entail tasks that are challenging, but achievable within the specific conditions of the doctoral project. Quite often, there is a mismatch in expectation between ECRs and research facilities 52 , likely arising from insufficient information at the admission stage regarding roles and responsibilities 53 . This parallels our finding that the majority of ECRs rated their PhD training experience markedly below their expectations. Thus, ECRs need to understand what explicit and implicit requirements are present toward the completion of their PhD training. One opportunity to enable clear expectation management is to offer an orientation day in graduate schools where potential doctoral candidates have the opportunity to receive information from administrative members, but also ECRs who are in different stages of their PhD training to provide testimonials.

Limitations

Due to different potential biases in our sample, we acknowledge that our data might not be representative of the whole population of interest. As we might have mainly reached doctoral researchers, who are interested in or even affected by mental health problems, we recognize that this procedure may have created a sampling bias. Further, the nature of the survey questions might have created a demand characteristics bias, potentially leading to elevated levels of reported burden. However, we think that the extent of these biases is comparable to other studies investigating mental health using self-report questionnaires. We also detected a gender response bias: We had more female responders even though we targeted mainly research fields related to neuroscience with a slightly men-dominated gender distribution 16 . BSI scores of our sample were rather low for overall anxiety, but rather high for the subscale phobic anxiety (56%). The latter subscale includes items that might have changed in weighting in pandemic times (e.g., “being in large crowds”), leading to increased scores. We also acknowledge that doctoral researchers’ retrospective assessment of their wellbeing might have led to biased judgements of aspects before the pandemic.

In addition to this limitation, we captured the history of mental illness more broadly (e.g., having contact with psychiatry/psychology or being previously diagnosed with a mental disorder), but did not ask for the specific diagnosis. Thus, our data does not allow for the exploration of the relationship between the mental health indexes and one or another mental disorder in-depth. We recognize that this could be especially important as we observed that a prior diagnosis was the main predictor of several dependent variables. Further, we did not assess the direct impact of the pandemic on the participants (e.g., being infected or having lost relatives or colleagues due to the pandemic). However, we asked participants if they experienced any event within two weeks prior to participation which would render their answers unrepresentative for a longer time perspective and excluded the respective data. We believe that losing a loved one or experiencing high stress due to a COVID-19 infection would have been captured in this response.

On a global scale, our survey focused on German doctoral researchers, with a certain focus on international students within the field of neuroscience, which may be generalizable to countries of similar funding opportunities and research culture. However, limited assumptions should be made about ECRs’ mental health in countries with diverging research conditions (e.g., of the Global South 35 ).

Our findings extend the ongoing debate about the mental health crisis in academia: Doctoral researchers’ self-reports showed increased levels of depression, burnout, and loneliness and further decreased mental wellbeing under the influence of the pandemic. Importantly, self-reported mental health problems were strongly linked to the PhD training, which emphasizes the need to improve academic work culture. Initiatives founded by ECRs have sought to actively reduce harmful work conditions and the stigmatization of mental health problems in academia. However, long-term change also demands top-down solutions. We thus call research institutions to action to create PhD training conditions that target the factors we identified and bring about sustainable systemic changes for academia.

Materials and methods

Participants.

We sought to target early career researchers pursuing their doctorate at research facilities in Berlin and the greater Berlin area to investigate the status of their mental health and potential COVID-19 related mental health changes via an online survey. The cross-sectional study was approved by the ethics committee of the Faculty of Psychology of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided written informed consent. Participants had the option to take part in a raffle to win 25 Euro. In total, 335 doctoral researchers completed the survey. As we aimed to compare the perceived mental health and satisfaction with PhD training of doctoral researchers before and after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we excluded participants who did not start their PhD training at least three months prior to the beginning of the pandemic (March 2020 in Germany; n = 75). Additionally, we excluded participants who indicated that they experienced an important life event which could have influenced their mental health significantly in the last two weeks (n = 38). In the remaining sample of 222 participants, the age ranged from 24 to 52 years ( M  = 29.8; SD  = 3.4). Gender, nationality, years into the PhD training, and type of the PhD program are summarised in Table 3 . Type of PhD program refers to structured programs (as often provided by graduate schools) vs. individual doctoral projects. They differ in characteristics, which are potentially important for doctoral researchers’ wellbeing, especially in the pandemic. For example, doctoral researchers in structured programs are often organized in cohorts or years, which facilitates the growth of a professional peer network.

Data were collected cross-sectionally between January and February 2021 with an online survey administered via the SoSci Survey platform ( www.soscisurvey.de ) and further processed in R ver. 4.0.2. The R code including data, analysis code and a HTML file with all procedures rendered in accessible form, are available at an OSF repository ( https://osf.io/q5w4g/ ). The survey consisted of standardized measures of mental health and self-developed questions regarding changes in satisfaction before and during the pandemic in relation to PhD-specific aspects.

Standardized measures of mental health

We included three standardized questionnaires to assess participants’ mental health state. For all these questionnaires, higher scores relate to greater significance of the measured mental health problem. We used the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI 54 ), which has 53 items to assess nine mental health symptom dimensions: somatization, obsession-compulsion, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism. Participants were asked to choose how much a described problem bothered them in the last week (e.g., “Nervousness or shakiness inside”, scale: “Not at all”, “A little bit”, “Moderately”, ”Quite a bit”, and “Extremely”). For each dimension, raw scores were transformed into t-scores to relate the results to the general population. In reference to the BSI manual 54 , we considered t-scores equal to or larger than1 SD (t-score = 60) as clinically relevant.

The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI 15 ) was used to measure personal and work-related burnout (the third CBI scale, namely client-related burnout, was omitted in our survey as the work of doctoral researchers is rarely concerned with clients). In 13 questions, participants were asked how often they experienced described problems in the last weeks (e.g., “How often do you feel tired?”, scale: “Never/Almost never”, ”Seldom”, ”Sometimes”, ”Often”, “Always”) or how intense these problematic experiences were (“To a very low degree”, ”To a low degree”, ”Somewhat”, ”To a high degree”, ”To a very high degree”). For scoring, each answer is assigned a numerical value from 0 for “Never/almost never” or “To a very low degree” to 100 for “Always” or “To a very high degree”. The score is calculated as the mean of all items.

Further, we used the De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale (11-item version 55 ) to measure social and emotional loneliness. Participants were asked to indicate how often they experienced different situations (e.g., “There is always someone I can talk to about my day-to-day problems”, scale: “None of the time”, “Rarely”, “Some of the time”, “Often”, “All the time”). Maximum total score is 11 (one per item), which combines six items from the emotional subscale and five items from the social subscale.

Self-developed questions on mental health and satisfaction with PhD training under consideration of the pandemic

In order to assess participants’ perceived mental health and satisfaction in relation to their PhD training, we created questions specifically targeting these topics considering the context of the pandemic situation. We based wording and content of the questions on other surveys targeting ECRs’ mental health, such as the survey of the N 2 network 16 and the annual Nature survey 3 . We subsequently adapted the questions to capture the influence of the pandemic.

Besides demographic questions and PhD specifics (e.g., years into PhD training), we collected information on existing and past clinical mental health diagnosis, expectations regarding the PhD training before its start, potential support structures, and changes in satisfaction with PhD-specific aspects (e.g., supervision) caused by the pandemic. We thus asked our participants to evaluate these aspects retrospectively for the times before the pandemic as well as the current in-pandemic situation. The results reported here include a subset of all questions administered in the survey; the full list can be found in the OSF repository ( https://osf.io/q5w4g/ ).

Statistical analyses

To conceive the actual mental health state of our participants, we used descriptive statistics for the standardized questionnaires. Therefore, we computed the mean and standard deviation of the BSI, CBI, and De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale scores to compare these values with existing literature. For the self-developed questions on mental health of doctoral researchers and ratings of satisfaction with PhD training, we calculated percentages per response category. We then performed two exploratory statistical analyses: The first analysis aimed to investigate whether there was a change in retrospective pre-pandemic and current in-pandemic ratings of PhD-related satisfaction aspects and items contributing to mental health issues. We performed two-tailed dependent t-tests for all related items. The second analysis aimed to investigate potential predictors of three mental health aspects: depression, anxiety, and burnout. We chose these aspects because they are most frequently considered in the context of the mental health of ECRs 2 , 3 , 4 . To this goal, we built three multiple regression models with the BSI depression t-scores, the BSI anxiety t-scores, and the CBI work-related burnout scores as dependent variables. To control for mental health issues potentially unrelated to the PhD, we included prior clinical diagnosis of a mental disorder (pre- or since the beginning of the PhD) as a control variable in all models. We expected that the three mental health aspects would be related to years into the PhD training, overall satisfaction with the PhD training, being a member of a graduate program, and gender, but we were also interested in the contribution of other factors. Therefore, we entered all suitable survey questions (see column “Predictor” within the HTML file on the OSF page) as potential predictors in the models, and conducted a stepwise selection of the best model with the bidirectional step() function (stats package). This procedure allows for iterative adding and removing predictors based on the model’s fit estimated with the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). The predictors in the selected models are chosen based on their statistical significance for explaining variance. Due to few data points in the following categories, we excluded participants who (1) did not identify as a woman or a man (n = 9), (2), did not indicate being part of a structured or individual PhD program (n = 14), and (3) chose not to provide information about whether they were diagnosed with a mental disorder (n = 1). This procedure resulted in a sample size of 198 participants for this exploratory analysis. Responses to the question “How long have you been living in Germany?” were binned into three categories: 0–3 years, 4 + years, and native. Due to the design of the survey (participants could not proceed without giving a response for each item concerned for analysis), there was no missing data.

It should be noted that stepwise regression is a discouraged method for hypothesis testing and should be interpreted with caution in data exploration. The reason for this is that it may produce narrow confidence intervals, high t statistics and low p values 56 . However, when treated with caution, it could generate valuable insights about the relationships in the dataset and produce ideas for future hypothesis testing studies. Further, because stepwise regression is less effective with more explanatory variables 56 , we did not include interaction terms in our exploratory models. Finally, because the p values in stepwise regression are not accurate and should not be interpreted as they would in a hypothesis-testing, theory-driven analysis, we do not correct for multiple comparisons, as there is no straightforward method to do so and no apparent benefit for the interpretability of the results. With all this in mind, in the current study, we do not encourage other researchers to use the reported statistics as true effect sizes in the population, but rather to consider this procedure as an exploratory tool for building insights about our data and generating future hypotheses in theory-driven studies.

The stepwise selection procedure confirmed that prior diagnosis explained significant portions of variance in all models. Hence, other predictors explained additional variance in the data suggesting that PhD-related aspects may have a somewhat additive (to clinical diagnoses) influence on mental health problems. We also explored models without prior diagnosis as a predictor, which showed a similar pattern of results as the full models presented below (see point 6.2 in the HTML file in the repository). The selected models were checked for regression assumptions (normality, linearity, multicollinearity (with Variance Inflation Factors), homoscedasticity), which were met for all models (details for each model are reported in the HTML file). The significance level for all the tests was set to 0.05. However, it should be noted that these analyses are data-driven and thus any statistical significance should be considered with care. To estimate the main effects in the analyses (across levels of multiple categorical predictors), we conducted a type-II analysis of variance using the model parameters.

Ethics approval

The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of the Department of Psychology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Data availability

Data and code that support the findings of this study are openly available at the OSF repository: https://osf.io/q5w4g/ .

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all members of Scholar Minds for their support in conceptualizing this survey project. Scholar Minds is a Berlin-based initiative of PhD candidates concerned with mental health in academia ( www.scholar-minds.net ; Berlin, Germany) which was, together with other PhD researchers, co-founded by S.N., M.M., K.B.

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This study was supported by funding from the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft (sdw). We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the German Research Foundation (DFG)—337619223/RTG2386.

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These authors contributed equally: Sandra Naumann, Magdalena Matyjek and Katharina Bögl.

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Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Sandra Naumann, Magdalena Matyjek, Katharina Bögl & Isabel Dziobek

Department of Psychology, Institute of Life Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

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S.N., M.M. and K.B. were involved in the survey design, data collection, and interpretation of the data. M.M. conducted the statistical analysis S.N., M.M., K.B. and I.D. drafted and reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sandra Naumann .

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Naumann, S., Matyjek, M., Bögl, K. et al. Doctoral researchers’ mental health and PhD training satisfaction during the German COVID-19 lockdown: results from an international research sample. Sci Rep 12 , 22176 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26601-4

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26601-4

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‘You have to suffer for your PhD’: Poor mental health among doctoral researchers

PhD students are the future of research, innovation and teaching at universities and beyond – but this future is at risk. There are already indications from previous research that there is a mental health crisis brewing among PhD researchers.

My colleagues and I studied the mental health of PhD researchers in the UK and discovered that, compared with working professionals, PhD students were more likely to meet the criteria for clinical levels of depression and anxiety. They were also more likely to have significantly more severe symptoms than the working-professional control group.

We surveyed 3,352 PhD students, as well as 1,256 working professionals who served as a matched comparison group . We used the questionnaires used by NHS mental health services to assess several mental health symptoms.

More than 40% of PhD students met the criteria for moderate to severe depression or anxiety. In contrast, 32% of working professionals met these criteria for depression, and 26% for anxiety.

The groups reported an equally high risk of suicide. Between 33% and 35% of both PhD students and working professionals met the criteria for “suicide risk”. The figures for suicide risk might be so high because of the high rates of depression found in our sample.

We also asked PhD students what they thought about their own and their peers’ mental health. More than 40% of PhD students believed that experiencing a mental health problem during your PhD is the norm. A similar number (41%) told us that most of their PhD colleagues had mental health problems.

Just over a third of PhD students had considered ending their studies altogether for mental health reasons.

Between 33% and 35% of both PhD students and working professionals met the criteria for “suicide risk”. Source: Philippe Lopez/AFP

There is clearly a high prevalence of mental health problems among PhD students, beyond those rates seen in the general public. Our results indicate a problem with the current system of PhD study – or perhaps with academic more widely. Academia notoriously encourages a culture of overwork and under-appreciation.

This mindset is present among PhD students. In our focus groups and surveys for other research , PhD students reported wearing their suffering as a badge of honour and a marker that they are working hard enough rather than too much. One student told us :

“There is a common belief … you have to suffer for the sake of your PhD, if you aren’t anxious or suffering from impostor syndrome, then you aren’t doing it “properly”.

We explored the potential risk factors that could lead to poor mental health among PhD students and the things that could protect their mental health.

Financial insecurity was one risk factor. Not all researchers receive funding to cover their course and personal expenses, and once their PhD is complete, there is no guarantee of a job. The number of people studying for a PhD is increasing without an equivalent increase in postdoctoral positions .

Another risk factor was conflict in their relationship with their academic supervisor . An analogy offered by one of our PhD student collaborators likened the academic supervisor to a “sword” that you can use to defeat the “PhD monster”. If your weapon is ineffective, then it makes tackling the monster a difficult – if not impossible – task. Supervisor difficulties can take many forms. These can include a supervisor being inaccessible, overly critical or lacking expertise.

A lack of interests or relationships outside PhD study, or the presence of stressors in students’ personal lives were also risk factors.

We have also found an association between poor mental health and high levels of perfectionism, impostor syndrome (feeling like you don’t belong or deserve to be studying for your PhD) and the sense of being isolated .

Better conversations for PhD students

Doctoral research is not all doom and gloom. There are many students who find studying for a PhD to be both enjoyable and fulfilling , and there are many examples of cooperative and nurturing research environments across academia.

Studying for a PhD is an opportunity for researchers to spend several years learning and exploring a topic they are passionate about. It is a training programme intended to equip students with the skills and expertise to further the world’s knowledge. These examples of good practice provide opportunities for us to learn about what works well and disseminate them more widely.

The wellbeing and mental health of PhD students is a subject that we must continue to talk about and reflect on. However, these conversations need to happen in a way that considers the evidence, offers balance, and avoids perpetuating unhelpful myths.

Indeed, in our own study, we found that the percentage of PhD students who believed their peers had mental health problems and that poor mental health was the norm, exceeded the rates of students who actually met diagnostic criteria for a common mental health problem . That is, PhD students may be overestimating the already high number of their peers who experienced mental health problems.

Cassie M Hazell , Lecturer in Social Sciences, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

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Don’t write this off as a useless hack.

Jotting down your angry feelings on a piece of paper and then tearing them up has more than just a dramatic effect — it can help you feel better, researchers from the Graduate School of Informatics at Nagoya University in Japan said. 

“We expected that our method would suppress anger to some extent,” lead researcher Nobuyuki Kawai said in a Nagoya University press release .

“However, we were amazed that anger was eliminated almost entirely,” Kawai added. 

Researchers spent years compiling data on how writing can help reduce anger and how interacting with physical objects has an impact on mood, before publishing their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. 

In this particular project, Kawai and his graduate student Yuta Kanaya asked study participants to write down their opinions on social issues like whether or not smoking in public should be illegal. They said that doctoral students would be evaluating their writing. 

Doctoral students enlisted in the study were instructed to write the same insulting comment on the student’s work such as, “I cannot believe an educated person would think like this. I hope this person learns something while at the university.”

The students were then handed back their writing with the offensive comments scribbled on it. They were then asked to write about how they felt in response to the negative commentary. 

The researchers asked some participants to throw the paper in the trash after writing their responses and another group was instructed to keep the paper in a file at their desk. A third group was asked to put the paper in a plastic box or through a paper shredder. 

The students were asked to evaluate their anger levels after receiving negative comments as well as after they either kept or disposed of their written responses.

The study found the students who threw out their responses or shredded the paper felt less angry and bounced back to their baseline emotional state. Those who kept a file of the angry comments only had a small reduction in anger afterward, the researchers said.

Kawai said that this research could be used to help people in stressful situations in the workplace or elsewhere. 

“This technique could be applied in the moment by writing down the source of anger as if taking a memo and then throwing it away when one feels angry in a business situation,” he said. 

Kawai said the study findings are not unlike the Japanese tradition of hakidashisara , which means the purging or disposal of a plate. During the annual hakidashisara festival at the Hiyoshi Shrine outside of Nagoya, people smash discs to get their anger out and report feeling relieved after the event. 

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Health Sciences Students to Host Mental Health Event on Campus

As part of their capstone class, health sciences students are planning the University’s third annual Fresh Check Day. The fun and interactive event fosters community and education while promoting mental health awareness and suicide prevention.

April 3, 2024

By Renee Chmiel, Office of Marketing and Communications

It has been an exciting semester for Rebecca Lovatt ’24, ’25 MPH. She’s been coordinating, connecting, and communicating with her fellow Chargers across the University as she gears up for an important event later this month: Fresh Check Day.

Part of Lovatt’s health sciences capstone project, Fresh Check Day is planned by students for students. Designed to foster mental health awareness and suicide prevention, Fresh Check Day will be held on the Bixler-Gerber Quad (or in the Beckerman Recreation Center, if it rains) on Wednesday, April 17.

As a member of the outreach team, Lovatt has been collaborating with her classmates this semester to organize the event. She’s been coordinating with various departments and offices on campus, from Counseling and Psychological Services to Athletics , as well as with several recognized student organizations , to raise awareness and support. She’s also been encouraging her fellow Chargers to volunteer at the event and to attend.

“Mental health promotion and suicide prevention are extremely important,” said Lovatt, a health sciences major . “Through the activities we have planned, students can recognize and utilize the peer and faculty support that is available on our campus, and they can connect with necessary resources.”

Lovatt and her classmates are planning a community event that will educate and delight their fellow Chargers. They’ve created t-shirts, and they’re planning fun activities that will promote mental health. Fresh Check Day will also include important information about mental health and suicide prevention resources that are available to students. The student organizers hope to raise awareness about mental health while decreasing any stigma around seeking help or support.

Under the mentorship of their professors Deborah List, M.A., MPH, Ph.D. , and Kristina Krsiak, OTD, OTR/L , the students have been preparing for the event by fundraising, planning a variety of engaging activities, and training student volunteers. That’s something that Olivia Tona ’24 has been doing as a member of the activities team. They’ve been coordinating the day’s activities and tying each one to the theme of mental health awareness.

“This event gives students a chance to destress and participate in a fun event that is teaching them mental health coping skills as well as educating them on resources that are available to them on campus,” said Tona, a health sciences major. “I hope students will feel heard and know that they are not alone if mental health is something that they are struggling with. I also hope that students get a better idea about what services are available to them on campus.”

Gabriella Aquino ’24 has been helping to create compelling flyers and social media posts to promote Fresh Check Day as a member of the marketing team. She’s excited to host an event that she believes will be a great way to encourage interaction in a supportive environment.

“I believe that hosting a Fresh Check Day is important because it brings awareness to mental health in college students,” said Aquino, a health sciences major. “It will allow students to feel comfortable speaking up about their own mental health while enjoying fun activities that benefit their mental health. I hope this event creates meaningful experiences that encourage healthy ways to manage stress and emotional challenges, destigmatizing seeking help about mental health.”

The flagship program of the Jordan Porco Foundation , a nonprofit based in Connecticut, Fresh Check Day events are organized by universities nationwide. They support the foundation’s mission to foster suicide prevention, mental health, and hope in young adults.

The event not only supports students’ mental health and awareness, it also offers health sciences students an invaluable opportunity. They work together to apply what they’ve been learning in the classroom as they gain hands-on experience planning an event that will serve their fellow Chargers.

For Kaitlynn Sabatino ’24, her time as a health sciences major enabled her to feel prepared to help plan the event. She hopes it will offer her fellow Chargers critical tools and education that they can then apply to their own lives.

“Our capstone class is very group oriented,” she explains. “The students are running the event. The classes I have taken have helped me improve how I work in a group, and they’ve taught me how to share my thoughts freely within in the group.”

The event has been planned for Chargers by Chargers as part of a health sciences capstone project since 2022. Lovatt, the outreach team member, hopes it will continue to encourage a sense of belonging, connection, and community. She’s excited to help her classmates build crucial life skills while appreciating the importance of their own mental health and community connections.

“When you think about a health sciences capstone, you might not think of putting on an event,” she said. “However, the point of Fresh Check Day is to connect with others and help them, just as we hope to do as future healthcare professionals. I hope the students enjoy this event as much as we do.”

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