post thesis submission depression

Managing While and Post-PhD Depression And Anxiety: PhD Student Survival Guide

Embarking on a PhD journey can be as challenging mentally as it is academically. With rising concerns about depression among PhD students, it’s essential to proactively address this issue. How to you manage, and combat depression during and after your PhD journey?

In this post, we explore the practical strategies to combat depression while pursuing doctoral studies.

From engaging in enriching activities outside academia to finding supportive networks, we describe a variety of approaches to help maintain mental well-being, ensuring that the journey towards academic excellence doesn’t come at the cost of your mental health.

How To Manage While and Post-Phd Depression

Why PhD Students Are More Likely To Experience Depression Than Other Students

The journey of a PhD student is often romanticised as one of intellectual rigour and eventual triumph.

However, beneath this veneer lies a stark reality: PhD students are notably more susceptible to experiencing depression and anxiety.

This can be unfortunately, quite normal in many PhD students’ journey, for several reasons:

Grinding Away, Alone

Imagine being a graduate student, where your day-to-day life is deeply entrenched in research activities. The pressure to consistently produce results and maintain productivity can be overwhelming. 

For many, this translates into long hours of isolation, chipping away at one’s sense of wellbeing. The lack of social support, coupled with the solitary nature of research, often leads to feelings of isolation.

Mentors Not Helping Much

The relationship with a mentor can significantly affect depression levels among doctoral researchers. An overly critical mentor or one lacking in supportive guidance can exacerbate feelings of imposter syndrome.

Students often find themselves questioning their capabilities, feeling like they don’t belong in their research areas despite their achievements.

Nature Of Research Itself

Another critical factor is the nature of the research itself. Students in life sciences, for example, may deal with additional stressors unique to their field.

Specific aspects of research, such as the unpredictability of experiments or the ethical dilemmas inherent in some studies, can further contribute to anxiety and depression among PhD students.

Competition Within Grad School

Grad school’s competitive environment also plays a role. PhD students are constantly comparing their progress with peers, which can lead to a mental health crisis if they perceive themselves as falling behind.

This sense of constant competition, coupled with the fear of failure and the stigma around mental health, makes many hesitant to seek help for anxiety or depression.

How To Know If You Are Suffering From Depression While Studying PhD?

If there is one thing about depression, you often do not realise it creeping in. The unique pressures of grad school can subtly transform normal stress into something more insidious.

As a PhD student in academia, you’re often expected to maintain high productivity and engage deeply in your research activities. However, this intense focus can lead to isolation, a key factor contributing to depression and anxiety among doctoral students.

Changes in Emotional And Mental State

You might start noticing changes in your emotional and mental state. Feelings of imposter syndrome, where you constantly doubt your abilities despite evident successes, become frequent.

This is especially true in competitive environments like the Ivy League universities, where the bar is set high. These feelings are often exacerbated by the lack of positive reinforcement from mentors, making you feel like you don’t quite belong, no matter how hard you work.

Lack Of Pleasure From Previously Enjoyable Activities

In doctoral programs, the stressor of overwork is common, but when it leads to a consistent lack of interest or pleasure in activities you once enjoyed, it’s a red flag. This decline in enjoyment extends beyond one’s research and can pervade all aspects of life.

The high rates of depression among PhD students are alarming, yet many continue to suffer in silence, afraid to ask for help or reveal their depression due to the stigma associated with mental health issues in academia.

Losing Social Connections

Another sign is the deterioration of social connections. Graduate student mental health is significantly affected by social support and isolation.

You may find yourself withdrawing from friends and activities, preferring the solitude that ironically feeds into your sense of isolation.

Changes In Appetite And Weight

Changes in appetite and weight can be a significant indicator of depression. As they navigate the demanding PhD study, students might experience fluctuations in their eating habits.

Some may find themselves overeating as a coping mechanism, leading to weight gain. Others might lose their appetite altogether, resulting in noticeable weight loss.

These changes are not just about food; they reflect deeper emotional and mental states.

Such shifts in appetite and weight, especially if sudden or severe, warrant attention as they may signal underlying depression, a common issue in the high-stress environment of PhD studies.

Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

PhD students grappling with depression often feel immense pressure to excel academically while battling isolation and imposter syndrome. Lacking adequate mental health support, some turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms like substance abuse. These may include:

• Overeating, 
• And many more.

These provide temporary relief from overwhelming stress and emotional turmoil. However, such methods can exacerbate their mental health issues, creating a vicious cycle of dependency and further detachment from healthier coping strategies and support systems.

It’s essential for PhD students experiencing depression to recognise these signs and seek professional help. Resources like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline are very helpful in this regard.

Suicidal Thoughts Or Attempts

Suicidal thoughts or attempts may sound extreme, but they can happen in PhD studies. This is because of the high-pressure environment of PhD studies.

Doctoral students, often grappling with intense academic demands, social isolation, and imposter syndrome, can be susceptible to severe mental health crises.

When the burden becomes unbearable, some may experience thoughts of self-harm or suicide as a way to escape their distress. These thoughts are a stark indicator of deep psychological distress and should never be ignored.

It’s crucial for academic institutions and support networks to provide robust mental health resources and create an environment where students feel safe to seek help and discuss their struggles openly.

How To Prevent From Depression During And After Ph.D?

A PhD student’s experience is often marked by high rates of depression, a concern echoed in studies from universities like the University of California and Arizona State University. If you are embarking on a PhD journey, make sure you are aware of the issue, and develop strategies to cope with the stress, so you do not end up with depression. 

Engage With Activities Outside Academia

One effective strategy is engaging in activities outside academia. Diverse interests serve as a lifeline, breaking the monotony and stress of grad school. Some activities you can consider include:

• Social gatherings.

These activities provide a crucial balance. For instance, some students highlighted the positive impact of adopting a pet, which not only offered companionship but also a reason to step outside and engage with the world.

Seek A Supportive Mentor

The role of a supportive mentor cannot be overstated. A mentor who adopts a ‘yes and’ approach rather than being overly critical can significantly boost a doctoral researcher’s morale.

This positive reinforcement fosters a healthier research environment, essential for good mental health.

Stay Active Physically

Physical exercise is another key element. Regular exercise has been shown to help cope with symptoms of moderate to severe depression. It’s a natural stress reliever, improving mood and enhancing overall wellbeing. Any physical workout can work here, including:

• Brisk walking
• Swimming, or
• Gym sessions.

Seek Positive Environment

Importantly, the graduate program environment plays a critical role. Creating a community where students feel comfortable to reveal their depression or seek help is vital.

Whether it’s through formal support groups or informal peer networks, building a sense of belonging and understanding can mitigate feelings of isolation and imposter syndrome.

This may be important, especially in the earlier stage when you look and apply to universities study PhD . When possible, talk to past students and see how are the environment, and how supportive the university is.

Choose the right university with the right support ensures you keep depression at bay, and graduate on time too.

Remember You Have The Power

Lastly, acknowledging the power of choice is empowering. Understanding that continuing with a PhD is a choice, not an obligation. If things become too bad, there is always an option to seek a deferment, pause. You can also quit your studies too.

Work on fixing your mental state, and recover from depression first, before deciding again if you want to take on Ph.D studies again. There is no point continuing to push yourself, only to expose yourself to self-harm, and even suicide.

Wrapping Up: PhD Does Not Need To Ruin You

Combating depression during PhD studies requires a holistic approach. Engaging in diverse activities, seeking supportive mentors, staying physically active, choosing positive environments, and recognising one’s power to make choices are all crucial.

These strategies collectively contribute to a healthier mental state, reducing the risk of depression. Remember, prioritising your mental well-being is just as important as academic success. This helps to ensure you having a more fulfilling and sustainable journey through your PhD studies.

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

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How to cope with life changes and burnout after PhD thesis submission? [closed]

The last year has been ridiculously difficult. I can easily say it has been 90h weeks 12 months in a row, with the hours taken of rest being vastly overshadowed by intense guilt (over not using that time to work) and inadequacy. I produced a lot of research, published 5 new papers, and produced a thesis which is now submitted for evaluation. On the day I submitted it (about a month ago), I couldn't even read a single sentence and maintain focus - that's how severe my burnout was. My sense of not being good enough permeated every aspect of my being.

I'm finding myself now getting better, slowly and surely. But the brain fog is ridiculously severe. I don't think I have lost intelligence, but the lack of care I feel for my current position as a research assistant eclipses all output I know I'm otherwise capable of producing (or used to be, anyway). On top of that, I feel more tired than usual. I easily need 1-2 more sleep in a day. Normally, I'd be exceptionally motivated to work out, and now I really could not care less. I adopted this "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do." attitude, in hopes to be kinder and gentler to myself as opposed to the whoo-tshh (whipping sounds) dictator I had employed to stay on track in my madness PhD.

I cannot fathom a job in this field anymore, I cannot stand the endless thinking up of made-up projects to pursue research grants. I want out of academia, and this both excites and terrifies me. I feel largely inadequate as a computer scientist joining industry post-PhD because I just spent 3 years of my life not getting industry experience.

I feel lost. Like there's a daily existential crisis. I don't know what to do with my life, and what's worse, I don't even know if I'll recover from this. I mean, what even is this? PTSD? Burnout? Needing a break after excruciating intense labour and emotional distress?

How can I deal with the life changes and the drop in motivation after having submitted my PhD? How do I deal with the remaining burnout?

• 21 Are you seeing a counselor, or similar professional? –  Nate Eldredge Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 11:48
• 3 Nope. It's hard to afford that when my life is in complete flux with needing to choose where to go next (job, country). I suppose I can speak to my PhD counselor, if that is still an option. Why do you suggest this? –  User293727 Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 11:50
• 9 I said these issues are "not un common", i.e. they are pretty common. –  Nate Eldredge Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 12:12
• 12 I don't find a question here, just a plea. But, let me, at least, give some perspective. You've just won a marathon. It was especially difficult at the end but you pushed through to success. Your body gave out after you passed the finish and you collapsed, hopefully into the arms of loved-ones. At the moment, you don't even want to think about ever running, or even moving, again. Your coach and medical advisors will help you back into a normal state in which you can plan your next steps. But it is too early to think of that now. You just need to recover. Life isn't always like that last mile. –  Buffy Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 12:52
• 2 Continuing my analogy, I have a friend who blew out his knees running marathons. He now rides a bicycle and does much better with the more measured and less punishing pace it affords. You don't need to give up everything or move into a cave. Find some professional help to help you decompress, as others have suggested. –  Buffy Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 13:13

7 Answers 7

The first thing to do is to get rid of the 90 hour weeks, and resolve never to get back into that trap. There is a lot of experience suggesting that the maximum weekly output for intellectual jobs is produced at around 40 hours a week. Going beyond that reduces actual production, because of more mistakes and less creative thought. Your mileage may vary, but it would be very unusual for 90 hours to be optimal.

You need to accept that sleep, exercise, relaxation, and social life are all essential to achieving maximum productivity when working, and to general mental and physical health. If you feel intense guilt when not working, and cannot change that by yourself, you may need some sort of counseling to help you get a healthier attitude.

The mental issues you describe could just be because you got into a bad habit of working too long and relaxing too little. On the other hand, there could be an underlying problem that needs a professional. I am not qualified to evaluate that, and agree with the suggestion in comments that you should consider counseling.

• 18 @User293727 So you've had two weeks of rest after a stressful year of working 225% time and you wonder why you haven't recharged yet? I admit I'm not sure how long it's "supposed" to take, but two weeks of holiday (no, work doesn't really count) sounds awfully short compared to what you've put yourself through. –  Anyon Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 12:57
• 4 @Anyon you know, when you put it in perspective like that, it does seem silly of me to expect such rapid improvements... I suppose I was hoping to exert the same discipline and willpower onto recovery. But alas, seems I've run out of it. –  User293727 Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 13:08
• 3 Personally I can recommend hiking in the mountains for a week or two. It eliminates the feeling of being guilty of not working (enough), because one simply CANNOT work or actively prepare your „life after PhD“ while doing this, while presenting a different rewarding challenge at the same time. Good for your mind. –  jvb Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 14:38
• 2 Discipline and willpower are not what one needs for effective relaxation. You need to turn them off, and just relax. If you enjoy hiking, go hike. If there is some TV show you like that you have not had time to watch, binge watch... –  Patricia Shanahan Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 15:32
• 1 @User293727 After I finished all my classes and thesis defense for my master's degree, I didn't start working or work on any research for more than 3 months. I am very glad I took my sweet time finding a job and resting up. –  Kevin Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 22:39

First of all: congratulations on submitting your thesis and on publishing 5 papers! That's a tremendous effort!

I was in a somewhat similar situation to you in that the last 9 months or so of my PhD involved ridiculous hours and a lot of uncertainty around getting results and having access to equipment etc. It can be hugely stressful, and for months one builds up this expectation that with submitting the thesis all of this stress will just magically disappear and be replaced by elation, happiness, and fulfillment. Unfortunately in reality submitting my thesis (and later passing my viva) were two hugely anti-climactic experiences.

I was suddenly without a purpose, and without a plan (with respect to my career). Ever since I was a child I wanted to be a scientist, and later this had morphed into more tangible goals like "getting a PhD" and "working in academia". After my PhD I had achieved the first goal, but I didn't really want to work in "the real" academia anymore.

After my viva I soon wanted to get back into reading non-scientific books, as that's something that was very much on the back-burner during the PhD, but I found my attention span to be extremely short and my motivation to keep reading was very low. It took me about 3 months before my hunger for reading and new knowledge came back.

Figuring out what I wanted to do career-wise took a lot longer for me, and involved many hours of often somewhat circular conversations with friends and family (plus probably hundreds of hours of soul-searching on my own) over many months.

I realise that none of this really answers your questions, but I think they're also going to be fairly individual answers for everyone. However, I found the following to be hugely helpful:

• If you can, take some time off from academia/work to spend time with friends/family and/or do something you love but you had to compromise on a lot during the PhD (for me that was travelling and spending time in the outdoors).
• Without putting too much pressure on yourself with regards to timeframes and the like, start doing some research into options that could be attractive to you (through reading interesting books, lots of long articles, etc on a huge variety of topics I stumbled across a lot of interesting options, started following interesting companies, joined FB groups, observed, thought about what it would really be like to work in these areas, etc.). I went through lots of iterations of wildly different career paths before I arrived where I am today (actually surprisingly close to my PhD, but in industry).
• Regarding the lack of industry experience: everyone was in the same boat once. I think this is about finding a company that values the experience and the knowledge you gained throughout your PhD and is willing to invest in you as a person (intelligent, educated, hard-working, willing to learn, quick at grasping new concepts, self-sufficient but able to work in a team, able to achieve long-term goals, etc.) rather than hiring an employee who can hit the ground running (i.e. a company worth investing your time and effort into). In my experience there's companies who are looking for people like us, and they're great, and there's companies that are looking for something else, and they'd probably not be a good match for us either.

Probably a bit of a rambly post, but maybe the two big take home messages from this should be:

• You're definitely not the only one who feels like this!
• It will work out! It'll take different amounts of time for everyone, but there are lots of options and lots of different paths!

Although a mental health professional may certainly be able to help, a time-honored cure for your problem, that I think is almost guaranteed to be of some help, is to take a vacation . Two-three weeks in a nice, relaxed setting, preferably in a warm, exotic locale, will do wonders for your state of mind and help you look at your situation more clearly and think about your future, which, by the sound of it, is much rosier than you seem to think it is.

Congratulations on handing in your CS dissertation. It’s a fantastic achievement that would make most people (including those who spent the last three years in industry, I assure you) green with envy.

• OP mentioned in a comment that they have already taken two weeks of vacation. –  Nate Eldredge Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 22:03
• 4 @NateEldredge then I’d suggest taking more vacation, since the first time clearly wasn’t enough to recover from the period of overwork. –  Dan Romik Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 22:57

I adopted this " You don't have to do anything you don't want to do ." attitude, in hopes to be kinder and gentler to myself...

So it was all worthwhile then. The value of an experience isn't always what you expect it to be.

I want out of academia, and this both excites and terrifies me. I feel largely inadequate as a computer scientist joining industry post-PhD because I just spent 3 years of my life not getting industry experience.

You had your experience, and learned something from it, and now you'll try something new with the benefit of that knowledge. This is life.

If "computer science" and "industry" are in reference to programming, then you can get some more experience based on your own interests by finding an open-source project to contribute to at your own pace.

I don't know what to do with my life...

Instead of struggling to find something to do with your life (for something new), you can focus on maintenance and preparedness. Do you have a bunch of junk to get rid of? Is your non-junk well organized? Do you have any health issues you need to address? Is your bathroom clean?

Are you prepared to receive what you only dare to dream of?

it sounds like you're depressed. I've felt very much like this. In my case it was triggered by reaching a point where I thought I had achieved my major life goals, and had no new goals to work towards. You'll get better but it may take some time and some help from a medical professional.

I suggest you explore opportunities for new creative or artistic endeavours, spend time with friends, make new friends etc. In my case I took up music (writing, learning, performing, playing in a band). You may not even have to make any big professional/academic changes, but it could help to do something fresh or different professionally for a while.

I'm finding myself now getting better, slowly and surely.

Well, from your description - not quite. That is, not surely, and in some respects you're now experiencing the repercussions of working yourself to the bone.

the lack of care I feel for my current position as a research assistant eclipses all

After you come back from your vacation , see if you still feel the same. If you do, it's time to remind yourself, or perhaps ask yourself "Why did I do this in the first place?" - and then re-assess whether you've achieved that goal; whether you want to continue following it ( not in 90h work-weeks, nor in 50h work-weeks either); whether you want to try something else (for now or permanently).

Remember, though! You've not "lost" or "wasted" anything - except your peace-of-mind and physical health perhaps.

output I know I'm otherwise capable of producing (or used to be, anyway).

You're not a paper mill, you're a person. Stop thinking about imaginary theoretically-producible "output".

On top of that, I feel more tired than usual. I easily need 1-2 more sleep in a day.

When you're stressed out, in an anxiety spell, and/or depressed - your sleep suffers too. You don't sleep as well. That's why you feel you need more sleep, and at the same time - even that sleep is not enough. Consult your physician. He may or may not prescribe some sort of super-mild anti-anxiety medication if your sleep trouble is serious. In parallel, consider an appropriate physical/meditative activity; I have found Yoga to be helpful, but YMMV.

Normally, I'd be exceptionally motivated to work out, and now I really could not care less.

"work out" sounds like something very intensive and not very relaxing, which gets your adrenaline pumping. Like I said above, perhaps something with less "grrr!"

I adopted this "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

... but it seems like you're beating yourself up about it. Remember this is not a binary thing; and it's not permanent. So: "For a while, you don't have to do all those things you don't want to."

Also, I'm guessing this doesn't help with the fact that you're not really sure what it is that you want.

I cannot fathom a job in this field anymore, I cannot stand the endless thinking up of made-up projects to pursue research grants.

... which is why - after your vacation - think of what it is that you actually want to do as an academic. And if there's no such thing - then your job search should probably focus, at least partially, on out-of-academia positions. This is not "failing" - because your goals have changed.

I feel largely inadequate as a computer scientist joining industry post-PhD because I just spent 3 years of my life not getting industry experience.

• You're quite adequate - believe you me (and I'm a CSer who entered industry after academia, then back again, then back again).
• Most industry experience is bad industry experience.
• Industry needs people with academic experience.
• If you worked 90h weeks, you got the industry experience of some places in industry...
• When you leave academia you'll understand what "inadequate" really means.
• Forget about adequacy - and think about finding something interesting to do in industry.

I feel lost.

Many, including myself, have been in your shoes - and worse. Hope this answer helps a bit. Don't try to snap yourself back to full working condition at once. It's a process.

I feel lost. Like there's a daily existential crisis. I don't know what to do with my life, and what's worse, I don't even know if I'll recover from this.

You need to keep in contact with people - not online, but physically. Visit friends and family. You don't have to repeat everything to every one of them, but try to be open to letting them cheer you up a bit about life.

It's post coital tristesse. You shot your wad. Seriously, though. As grim as the battle is, it can be sad when the combat is over. Those 90 hour weeks had a sort of joy of the struggle to them.

Can't help you on academia. There are a lot of twidgety aspects to it. Can't say industry is perfect either, though. But these issues exist whether you are just done with thesis or not.

Take some industry job interviews. Don't even worry (too much) about getting the offer...although that would be nice. But get yourself on the market. It will change your mindset to be going after something. And it will force you to get out of your own head...because of the person on the other end.

Go for some bike rides. Doesn't have to be in "cardio mode". But just get out and move a little and breath the vitamin D-shine.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged phd thesis health .

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Coping With Postdefense Depression

By  Angel M. Jones

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When you begin your doctoral journey, one day keeps you going: the day someone calls you “Doctor” for the first time. Defending your dissertation, while incredibly stress inducing, is an exciting event, because it means you have finally reached the finish line. All the blood, sweat and tears (both literal and figurative) were worth the joy you get to experience once it’s all over.

But what no one ever warns you is that, once you come down from your champagne-soaked high, the fact that it actually is all over will hit you like a ton of bricks. Of course, you’ll love being Dr. _____ (insert last name here), but you’ll also wake up one day and realize that you have no idea who that person is. And as ludicrous as it may sound to those who have never experienced it, you will actually begin to grieve your life as a student.

Identity Crisis

During my program, not only did being a student become part of my identity, it became the only part of me that I acknowledged. I no longer knew what it meant to be a daughter, a friend, a sister or even a person -- at least not outside the academy. And no, this wasn’t something I did on purpose. I woke up one day, and my name was no longer Angel. It was, “Hi, my name is Angel, I’m in the inequality in education Ph.D. program and my research interests are centered on the experiences of Black and brown students with racial microaggressions at historically white institutions.” All said in one breath, without hesitation. That was because, during the Ph.D. process, you are no longer a person. You are a program, a year and a dissertation topic. It’s your temporary inmate ID until your dissertation committee releases you from academic prison. And although I hated that in the beginning, I eventually embraced it -- unknowingly yet wholeheartedly.

So because being a student became who and what I was, when I woke up as something else, I didn’t know what to do. Not only had I become well versed in the art of being a student, I had worked my butt off to figure it out. I battled impostor syndrome , ANOVA and the infamous Chapter 2 to get to the other side, but the grass definitely didn’t seem greener. Being called “Dr. Jones” sounded great, but it wasn’t able to drown out the “So, now what?” that constantly rang in my head.

And to make matters worse, I wasn’t the only person asking myself that question. In the most well-intentioned way possible, everyone around me also wanted to know. And while I completely understood their curiosity, it only added to me feeling lost.

How could I possibly think about what was next when I was still grieving what was? And as a first-generation student, my accomplishment meant even more to the people around me, so I battled my depression in silence because I didn’t want to ruin their joy and sense of pride. I also couldn’t yet talk to my friends that I had gone through the process with, because I was the first to finish and complaining about my feelings felt selfish and inconsiderate.

So when I wasn’t dealing with feelings of grief and sadness, I was struggling with guilt and shame. And I can assure you, none of it was in the brochure or the student handbook. I had no idea it was coming, and I paid the price for it.

Tackling the Problem

Before providing suggestions on how to prepare for the inevitable, I have to address the ways in which the academy contributes to the mental and emotional turmoil that students experience both before and after they complete their degrees. First, professors need to stop perpetuating the cycle of trauma by breaking down students with the goal of rebuilding them. Just because you were hazed during your doctoral process doesn’t mean you have to haze the next generation. Not only is this not beneficial academically, but it’s also harmful psychologically. Students wouldn’t have to struggle with a personal and academic identity crisis if they weren’t constantly caused to question who they were. This selfish behavior speaks more to the unaddressed insecurity of the professor than the capabilities of the student.

Second, it is important for universities to teach students that it is possible to develop their researcher identity without sacrificing the rest of themselves. For example, I always felt that parts of me weren’t “appropriate” in academic spaces, such as being an activist or a poet, yet I was eventually able to see that not only did I not have to discard those aspects of my identity, but I could also actually use them to make my research more impactful. While the academy may claim to value originality, its current practices reveal a desire for conformity and compliance.

As a result, students are left grappling with academic Stockholm syndrome that causes them to believe that they are incapable of surviving outside the four walls of their institution. Sending unequipped students to navigate potentially harmful terrain is irresponsible, especially when the challenges are foreseeable.

We know they may struggle with transitioning from student to scholar. We know that a successful dissertation defense won’t suddenly cure them of impostor syndrome. We also know that the academy, especially for marginalized scholars, will not suddenly embrace them because they have added letters to the end of their name. Equipping students to conduct meaningful research is important, but we also need to prepare them for the mental and emotional impact of their experiences.

What I Wish I’d Known

Even on my most optimistic days, I know academe won’t change overnight, so, in the meantime, I want to share the things I wish I had known. First, know who you were before the program and whom you want to be when you finish, aside from having “Doctor” added to your name. When coaching my students, I often tell them to remember their “why”: the reason they started the program to begin with. That said, the “why” is irrelevant if you lose the “who” in the process.

Second, please know that your dissertation does not define you. Your self-worth is not measured in participants, pages or citations. Not only will you survive the process, but you will continue to succeed once it’s over.

Third, know that you don’t have to have the rest of your life figured out the day after you defend. No one, other than maybe yourself, expects you to wake up on day two and suddenly have all the answers. As a matter of fact, even the most senior scholars will tell you that they still have moments of uncertainty. So instead of beating yourself up for not knowing what’s next, take some time to breathe and reacquaint yourself with who you are. You held your breath for several years, and now it’s time to give yourself permission to exhale.

Last, reflect on what you want. Too often, we get so swept up in the expectations of the academy that we don’t take the time to make the distinction between what we want to do and what we’re expected to do. Figuring this out, and being firm in your decision, will save you a lot of heartache down the road.

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The Research Whisperer

Just like the thesis whisperer – but with more money, post-phd depression.

The author of this post has chosen to remain anonymous and they hope that sharing their post-PhD challenges will be helpful for others who may be going through the same things, or who are supporting those who are.

For those who mentor or manage Early Career Researchers, especially new postdocs, it may be useful to have this post’s perspective in the contextual mix.

———————

When I submitted my thesis, I was hit by post-submission blues, which I was already aware of. What I didn’t expect was that the cloud didn’t lift with completion and graduation. I pretended otherwise, but the moments of genuine excitement and happiness were fleeting. I felt confused and ashamed, compounding my emotions.

Wondering if anyone else had ever felt this way, I Googled it. It turns out that I’m not alone in experiencing post-PhD depression and it is a lot more common than I thought.

Alarmingly, I had never heard of it.

This post shines some light on post-PhD depression so that we can better prepare PhD candidates for life during and after completion and provide the best support that we can to graduates.

The PhD journey changes people

Even if your experience was overwhelmingly positive, a PhD changes people by virtue of its length and nature. Completion can trigger reflection on your experience. It takes time to understand and accept how you’ve changed; this can be confronting and surface as an identity crisis.

Sacrifices made might be a source of pride, grief, or both. You may struggle with poorer mental and/or physical health. Catching up with ‘normal life’ can be nice but also a constant reminder of what you missed.

Processing the emotional and mental impact of a PhD can be particularly confronting for those who faced trauma during their PhD (whether coincidentally and/or because of it). Candidates might have turned to coping mechanisms that have become unhealth, in hindsight. When life suddenly changes due to completion, trauma can surface, as can the reality of the mechanisms used to cope.

There’s a lot of good-byes

For most people, the lifestyle, environment, and relationships that are part of the PhD journey change significantly or come to an end along with the PhD itself. The loss of things you loved can be intense and overwhelming. It can take time to grieve and let go.

The future is uncertain

PhD candidates who submit and graduate are often asked, ‘What next?’.

The post-doctoral job market is highly competitive, and non-academic career pathways can be difficult to establish. Graduates – even if they know what they want to do next – can struggle to find a suitable position, especially if they are part of a marginalised group and/or are primary caregivers.

There can be a range of internal and external pressures shaping decisions. Graduates might apply for particular roles purely because they feel that is what is expected of them. They might suffer from imposter syndrome, and question whether their success was deserved, and whether they are capable of continuing to succeed (‘maybe I just got lucky’). Others might feel trapped in a particular pathway due to their life circumstances.

What can help

It can really help to know you’re not alone! Acknowledge and accept what you feel: your feelings are valid.

Be gentle with yourself. Adjusting to life post-PhD takes time and that’s ok. It can help to do other things that you enjoy, like hobbies and making the most of relationships with family and friends. Engage in ways that feel safe and are less triggering. Set goals to help give you the buzz of completing things but be aware that it’s normal to be underwhelmed by these when compared to a PhD thesis.

When you can, reflect on what you enjoyed most throughout your PhD and investigate how you can continue to do that. Perhaps you loved data analysis, writing, interviewing participants, or tutoring students. These are all skills which are used in other career pathways, such as business analytics and teaching – the specifics might be different, but the process is the same.

There will be a range of opportunities that might be available to you which aren’t immediately obvious – so don’t be afraid to ask people, from your personal and academic circles, to point them out.

Of course, that can all be easier said than done. Consider talking about what you are going through with trusted family and friends and seeking professional help where appropriate. It’s ok to ask for support.

How to help someone else struggling with post-PhD depression

It’s nice to congratulate people when they submit and complete their degree but be mindful that they might not be feeling excited. Allow this to inform how you interact with people throughout their PhD journey.

For example, consider avoiding directly asking what they’re doing next, as this can be triggering (even if well-intentioned). Instead, consider asking, ‘What are you looking forward to next?’ – it gives space for the graduate to answer however they are comfortable. If you have a closer relationship with the graduate, you could also ask, ‘What were the highlights of your journey?’ and ‘How can we support you during this next stage?’.

Consider being open about your own post-PhD experience, too. Even a casual remark can help de-stigmatise post-PhD depression. Something like ‘I realised after I finished that I actually really missed working in the laboratory, so much so that I decided to volunteer to do outreach in high schools’, for example.

If possible, don’t cut off support immediately, whether it’s at a personal, professional, or institutional level.

Most importantly, prevention is better than a cure. It helps to encourage a strong identity for doctoral researchers beyond academia, including maintaining connections with their family, friends, and hobbies. Supervisors and other doctoral support teams can help by openly discussing work-life balance and encouraging it for their researchers.

Take the time to learn about mental health and the PhD journey, and implement best practice for yourself, your colleagues, and for PhD candidates more generally. The ‘Managing you mental health during your PhD: A survival guide’ by Dr Zoë Ayres is a fantastic resource for candidates and academics (and it’s available through many university libraries for free).

A PhD is a life-changing journey culminating in an extraordinary accomplishment. Everyone’s journey is different, including completion and what life after may bring – and that’s ok. We can all benefit from learning to better support each other regardless of what our journeys and futures look like.

Other reading

• The post-PhD blues (blogpost by Mariam Dalhoumi)
• Loss of identity: Surviving post-PhD depression (blogpost by Amy Gaeta)
• Post-PhD depression: Simple steps to recovery (video by Andy Stapleton)

Support services

• Mental health support agencies around the world (list compiled by CheckPoint)
• Lifeline Australia  – 13 11 14
• Head to health  (Australian government mental health site)
• Beyond Blue (Australia) offers short, over-the-phone counselling and a number of other resources.

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I had a depression for a year and is only just lifting and that was following my Masters degree- is this at all possible.,The degree was pretty intense because it was partially during Covid but can’t have been by far as stressful as a PhD

Thanks, Sophie. I’m sorry that you had such a rough time, and I hope that you are doing OK now. Thanks for sharing this with us. We all need support to get through these things, and I hope that you have the support that you need.

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Voices of Academia

Improving mental health in academia by giving you a voice., loss of identity: surviving post-phd depression by amy gaeta.

Completing the biggest achievement of my life has left me in the most zombie, emotionally depleted state of my life. Immediately after defending my dissertation successfully, thereby securing my Ph.D. in English, I found myself soft crying into a pillow and trying to find enough stability to reply to all the “congratulations!” text messages pinging on my phone. This emotional release marked the start of what I’ll refer to as my post-PhD depression: a state of aimlessness, premature cynicism, and loss sparked by the contradictory realization that it is all over and yet there is so much more to do. It is like finishing a marathon after giving all you got only to realize you’ve agreed to compete in a triathlon every day for the rest of your career.

Graduate Life 

I knew that leaving graduate school would be difficult. I had structured my life around it for the past six years; relied upon it for various forms of emotional, logistical, and material support, including health insurance and an income. But, as anyone who has done it will tell you, grad school can also be hell. Researchers have demonstrated that students have similar challenging experiences at institutions around the world (Fogg, 2009; Keeler & Siegel, 2020). Many students report feeling overworked, underpaid, and invisible in the eyes of the university unless they can develop some research that bodes well for the institution. Even then, students often feel that are not truly valued. They see themselves as reduced to a flashy toy for the university to wave about. This experience is made even more difficult depending on factors such as your race, gender, class, and disability status. It is not an exaggeration to say that grad school can be a site of trauma, if not traumatic itself. 

The mental turmoil experienced by a significant number of graduate students has gained much more attention in recent years, largely due to grad students and newly minted PhDs speaking out about their experiences. Less discussed is what happens to our mental health after grad school—post-PhD depression. The depression is certainly compounded by the collapsing job market and unrealistic demands of higher education, but is likely not caused by them (Fogg, 2009; Bekkouche, Schmid, & Carliner, 2022; Fernandez, 2019). Rather, I believe post-PhD depression stems from something deeper: a crisis of purpose, particularly the sense of loss that accompanies the end of a time of accomplishment and security. Our desire for purpose is human, and our purpose comes to shape who we are and how we are seen. If leaving grad school threatens our sense of purpose, that does not mean we need to find a new purpose. Rather, we need to interrogate why our sense of purpose—a determinant of who we are—is tethered to our position in an academic institution.

I am writing this blog post amid the height of this depressive episode with the hope of capturing the apathy and restlessness that accompanies it as I wallow in the grey area between grad school and academia. I also chose to write this now because I wanted to spare readers yet another narrative of inspiration or toxic resilience, or some other cliché that encourages people to tamper down their messy, ambivalent feelings and put on a happy, strong face.   

Sacrifice & The Self

Many grad school students have spent anywhere from 3 to 12 years of their early adult years in higher education. It is common for people to attend grad school immediately after finishing their MA or undergrad degree, which they probably completed right after graduating high school. At the time of my writing this, I am 29 and for the first time in 25 years, I am not a student in an educational institution. I have few memories of myself before school. Without ignoring that such a robust, long education is a massive privilege resulting from my race, class, and social situation, being in school so long does things to one’s ability to cultivate a strong sense of self. ‘Student’ and later one’s research areas, become a convenient explanation and stand-in for who you are . Your professional development and academic successes motivate the formation of this identity, while, at the same time, every dose of imposter syndrome and minor setback feels like a personal failure.

Academic culture promotes and celebrates a full body and mind self-sacrifice to the academy, one that begins in grad school. Whereas undergrad is a more social journey bound up in coming-of-age tropes and questions about identity, grad school is more of a personal and intellectual journey, one that entrenches itself in your psyche and wears down your self-esteem like a stone sitting right before an endless motion of rough waves. Grad school is quite lonely. There is no time to engage in campus culture beyond your home department. You’re told that you’re there to work, professionalize, and research. Soon, your entire life becomes structured around earning a degree and swinging through all the hoops—conferences, teaching, research awards, guest lectures, etc.—that you’re told you also need to succeed. In my first semester, I was working, studying, writing, reading, or in classes for at least 70 hours a week. Precisely due to the consuming design of grad school and academia, having it suddenly end can leave one feeling lost at sea. 

Because of the academy’s emphasis on productivity and structure, without grad school, I have been aimless. Not just “what am I going to do next” type-of-aimless, but “browse the cereal aisle at 11pm on a Tuesday” type-of-aimless. I cry a lot at tiny things. Each morning I wake up afraid at the prospect of how to get through the day. No hobby interests or fulfills me. I cannot access affordable mental health care because my health insurance ended immediately after graduation. People kept congratulating me and asking how I’m celebrating. I creak out a rehearsed monologue about ‘taking time for myself.’ While I want to celebrate this achievement, it is hard to look at it as an achievement after witnessing so many colleagues be pushed out of grad school due to the demands it put on their physical and mental health. I am proud of my Ph.D. I am not proud of what I allowed myself to go through to earn this degree.

In this state, I feel like I’m meeting a former version of myself for the first time in years. All the emotions, ideas, habits, desires, and fears that I repressed to survive grad school are now foaming at my mouth, emerging all at once like a geyser that’s been trapped by a glacier. I feel like I lost something, but the loss cannot be fully grasped or mourned. I also feel like I want something, but the desires cannot be fully wanted or realized. Any attempt to end my stay in this grey area is met with fear. At least fear is a feeling I can understand, something I can process and turn into knowledge. 

How to Prepare

After years of mentoring younger grad students and reflecting on my own missteps, I’ve come to realize what I wish I did differently and that I could have better prepared myself. Healing from grad school brings challenges in its own right, like accessing mental health care or a stable, supportive home. But neither of these promises to soothe the real wound here—your relationship with academia and your relationship with yourself. To address these relationships, you need to make an active effort to learn who you are without academia. This is best done early on, something that you practice on a micro and macro level. 

• Ground yourself in multiple places . The first piece of advice I give to every new grad student is to make friends and hobbies outside of the university; ideally, these are each non-academic. In my experience, these are people and things that bring you joy and support your self-worth. The more you structure your life around grad school, the more power it has over you, and thus the harder the blow will be when you leave it.
• De-romanticize grad school . Multiple things can be true at once. Grad school may offer you world-class learning resources and introduce you to some of the best friends you’ll ever make, but it will likely also put you in financial hardship and create mental distress at times. It can make and break you at once. Hold these contradictory images in the front of your mind. Once you have a clear, realistic image of grad school, you can begin to see your life without it, or at least, your value centered around it. 
• Return to what made you love your field . You were likely excited to go to grad school because you wanted to solve a problem, make a discovery, or push a research area to new heights. Is it not uncommon to have changed interests during grad school or to fall out of love with your thesis topic. You may even hate or resent it. Try to reclaim the joy or excitement that your research first brought you. Doing this will help you to remember yourself before grad school and recognize that you do not need an institution to learn and create.
• Sit with difficult emotions . Let yourself cry, scream, throw things, cry some more, and whatever else wants to crawl out of you. Do this as much as possible. Find a place where you can express these emotions without judgment or forced positivity. No matter what anyone says, you are not ungrateful for having complicated or even negative feelings toward grad school and your Ph.D. I have personally found that repressing your emotions will ensure a breakdown or worse.
• Leave your future open. Part of the misery comes from the pressure of trying to reach a future that may never materialize. I am not just talking about the academic job market or even a job at all. I am talking about how academic culture limits our imagination of the future by showing us a few pathways for how we can use our degrees and build a life. The more that you can see that the future remains wide open, the more that you can see graduating and aimlessness as forms of freedom. 

I have no idea how long this will last or how it will end. A part of me wonders if this depression is covering up a greater fear: the exhaustion does not end. A professor of mine once said grad school would be the best deal you get in academia, and while I want this to be bullshit, the current state of the job market and neoliberalization of the university does not give me much hope that he is wrong. I figure then that what I can take comfort in is that I do and can exist beyond the university.

Reference List

Bekkouche, N. S., Schmid, R. F., & Carliner, S. (2022). ‘Simmering Pressure:’ How Systemic Stress Impacts Graduate Student Mental Health.  Performance Improvement Quarterly ,  34 (4), 547-572.

Fernandez, M., Sturts, J., Duffy, L. N., Larson, L. R., Gray, J., & Powell, G. M. (2019). Surviving and thriving in graduate school.  SCHOLE: A Journal of Leisure Studies and Recreation Education ,  34 (1), 3-15.

Fogg, P. (2009). Grad-school blues.  Chronicle of higher education ,  55 (24), B12-B16.

Dr. Amy Gaeta (she/they) is a scholar and poet of disability, gender, and technology. She is an incoming postdoc in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is developing her first scholarly monograph. Broadly, her work focuses on questions about desire, ability, and the nature of the human in the context of high-tech militarization, medicine, and lifestyles. Her first chapbook The Andy Poems (2021) was published by Red Mare Press, and her second poetry book, Prosthetics & Other Organs is forthcoming on Dancing Girl Press. She regularly discusses all of this on Twitter @GaetaAmy

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PhDepression: Examining How Graduate Research and Teaching Affect Depression in Life Sciences PhD Students

Logan e. gin.

† Research for Inclusive STEM Education Center, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281

Nicholas J. Wiesenthal

§ Department of Biology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816

Katelyn M. Cooper

Graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression compared with the general population. However, few studies have examined how graduate school specifically affects depression. In this qualitative interview study of 50 life sciences PhD students from 28 institutions, we examined how research and teaching affect depression in PhD students and how depression in turn affects students’ experiences teaching and researching. Using inductive coding, we identified factors that either positively or negatively affected student depression. Graduate students more commonly mentioned factors related to research that negatively affected their depression and factors related to teaching that positively affected their depression. We identified four overarching aspects of graduate school that influenced student depression: the amount of structure in teaching and research, positive and negative reinforcement, success and failure, and social support and isolation. Graduate students reported that depression had an exclusively negative effect on their research, primarily hindering their motivation and self-confidence, but that it helped them to be more compassionate teachers. This work pinpoints specific aspects of graduate school that PhD programs can target to improve mental health among life sciences graduate students.

INTRODUCTION

In 2018, researchers found that graduate students were more than six times as likely to report experiencing depression and anxiety compared with the general population and subsequently declared a “graduate student mental health crisis” ( Evans et al. , 2018 ; Flaherty, 2018 ). Calls to identify which factors exacerbate graduate student mental health problems followed (“The Mental Health of PhD Researchers,” 2019; Woolston, 2019a ). However, few studies have taken an inductive approach to identifying what aspects of graduate school in particular affect student mental health. More commonly, large quantitative studies propose a limited number of factors that may affect student mental health that participants select from, few of which directly relate to graduate research or teaching ( Peluso et al. , 2011 ; Levecque et al. , 2017 ; Evans et al. , 2018 ; Liu et al. , 2019 ). In this interview study, we focus on depression in life sciences PhD students and examine which specific aspects of research and teaching graduate students report as affecting their depression. We also explore how depression affects students’ experiences in graduate school.

The American Psychiatric Association defines depression as a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how one feels, the way one thinks, and how one acts ( American Psychiatric Association, 2020 ). Depression is characterized by nine symptoms: depressed mood; markedly diminished interest or pleasure in activities; reduced ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness; feelings of worthlessness, or excessive or inappropriate guilt; recurrent thoughts of death or suicidal ideation, or suicide attempts or plans; insomnia or hypersomnia; significant change in appetite or weight; psychomotor agitation or retardation; and fatigue or loss of energy ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ; Schmidt and Tolentino, 2018 ). For depression to be diagnosed, the presence of at least five of the symptoms is required most of the day, nearly every day, for at least 2 weeks in addition to the occurrence of either depressed mood or diminished interest or pleasure ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). In the general U.S. population, depression affects approximately 6.7% of individuals and is estimated to affect 16.6% of individuals at some point in their lifetime.

Graduate students are far more likely to report experiencing depression compared with the general population ( Evans et al. , 2018 ; Barreira et al. , 2020 ). Specifically, a recent study of master’s and PhD students in programs across the world, spanning a variety of disciplines, found that 39% of graduate students reported having moderate to severe depression ( Evans et al. , 2018 ). Similar studies have demonstrated high rates of depression in graduate students in specific disciplines such as economics ( Barreira et al. , 2020 ), biochemistry ( Helmers et al. , 1997 ), pharmacology ( Helmers et al. , 1997 ), and physiology ( Helmers et al. , 1997 ). Depression rates have surged in recent years among graduate students ( American College Health Association, 2014 , 2019 ). Talking about depression has become more socially acceptable, particularly among younger adults ( Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 2015 ; Lipson et al. , 2019 ), which may have contributed to the number of students willing to reveal that they are struggling with mental health. Additionally, depression is highly related to burnout, defined as a work-related chronic stress syndrome involving emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment ( Maslach et al. , 2001 ; Bianchi et al. , 2014 ). Graduate work environments appear to be increasingly characterized as stressful and demanding ( American College Health Association, 2014 , 2019 ; Woolston, 2017 ), which may also be contributing to the increase in graduate depression rates.

Increasingly, scientists, psychologists, and education researchers are recognizing graduate student mental health as a concern and calling for further investigation of graduate student mental health in hopes of identifying interventions to improve graduate student quality of life (“The Mental Health of PhD Researchers,” 2019; Woolston, 2019a , b ). For example, in 2019, Nature added a question to its annual survey of PhD students asking students from around the world whether they had sought help for anxiety or depression, and more than one-third (36%) confirmed they had ( Woolston, 2019b ). Additionally, notable publication outlets such as Nature (“The Mental Health of PhD Researchers,” 2019), Scientific American ( Puri, 2019 ), and Science ( Pain, 2018 ) have published blogs or editorials spotlighting the need to improve graduate student mental health.

Some recent studies have sought to uncover the factors affecting depression in graduate students. Primarily, survey studies with predetermined factors that researchers hypothesized impact student mental health have identified poor mentor–mentee relationships ( Peluso et al. , 2011 ; Evans et al. , 2018 ; Hish et al. , 2019 ; Liu et al. , 2019 ; Charles et al. , 2021 ), financial stress ( Hish et al. , 2019 ; Jones-White et al. , 2020 ; Charles et al. , 2021 ), and lack of work–life balance ( Evans et al. , 2018 ; Liu et al. , 2019 ) to be associated with depression or depressive symptoms among graduate students in various disciplines. Other variables shown to be predictive of depression include low research self-efficacy, defined as low confidence in one’s ability to do research ( Liu et al. , 2019 ), difficulty publishing papers ( Liu et al. , 2019 ), hours worked per week ( Peluso et al. , 2011 ), and perceived institutional discrimination ( Charles et al. , 2021 ). Factors that appear to be protective of depressive symptoms include social support ( Charles et al. , 2021 ), mastery, defined as the extent to which individuals perceive themselves to be in control of the forces that impact their lives ( Hish et al. , 2019 ), positive departmental social climate ( Charles et al. , 2021 ), optimism about career prospects ( Charles et al. , 2021 ), and sense of belonging to one’s graduate program ( Jones-White et al. , 2020 ). While these studies have identified some depression-related factors associated with graduate school broadly and emphasize the importance of positive mentor–mentee relationships, few studies have explored factors specifically associated with research and teaching, the two activities that graduate students engage in most frequently during their time in a program. Additionally, the extant literature has primarily focused on surface causes of graduate student depression, yet understanding the underlying causes may be key to developing meaningful interventions. For example, while it is well established that student perception of poor mentorship is related to student depression ( Evans et al. , 2018 ; Hish et al. , 2019 ; Liu et al. , 2019 ; Charles et al. , 2021 ), it is less well understood what specific behaviors mentors exhibit and how such behaviors negatively affect the cognitive and behavioral underpinnings of graduate student depression. Without this knowledge, it is difficult to develop strategies to help mentors be more inclusive of students.

Theories of depression seek to explain the causes of depression. No theoretical model is widely accepted as an overarching framework for depression within the psychological and psychiatric communities ( Mcleod, 2015 ; Ramnerö et al. , 2016 ); instead, there are a number of models addressing how different aspects of depression are associated with the disorder. Arguably, the three most prominent models are cognitive ( Beck et al. , 1979 ), behavioral ( Martell et al. , 2001 ), and psychodynamic ( Busch et al. , 2016 ). In brief, cognitive theories focus on an individual’s beliefs and propose that changes in thinking precede depressive symptoms; for example, negative views of oneself, the world, and the future are thought to be common for individuals with depression ( Beck et al. , 1979 ; Leahy, 2002 ). Behavioral theories emphasize that depression is a result of one’s interaction with the environment; depressive symptoms are thought to be the result of decreased reward, lack of positive reinforcement, encouragement of depressive or passive behaviors, and discouragement of healthy behaviors ( Lewinsohn, 1974 ; Martell et al. , 2001 ; Carvalho et al. , 2011 ). Psychodynamic theories of depression consider the role of feelings and behaviors in the etiology and persistence of depressive symptoms; these theories often focus on 1) one’s biology and temperamental vulnerabilities, 2) earliest attachment relationships, and 3) childhood experiences associated with frustration, helplessness, loss, guilty, or loneliness ( Busch et al. , 2016 ). While each group of theories has been critiqued and no one theory fully explains one’s experience with depression ( Mcleod, 2015 ; Ramnerö et al. , 2016 ), we propose that each may be helpful in understanding how aspects of graduate school may affect depression among PhD students.

The thoughts and behaviors associated with depression may in turn affect students’ experiences in graduate school, particularly their experiences with research and teaching. While no studies have examined how depression explicitly affects graduate students’ research experiences, studies have identified ways in which depression can affect students’ experiences in undergraduate research ( Cooper et al. , 2020a , b ). Undergraduate researchers report that their depression negatively affected their motivation, ability to concentrate and remember, intellectual engagement, and creativity in research ( Cooper et al. , 2020b ). Undergraduates described that their depression also caused them to be overly self-critical, less social, and ultimately negatively affected their research productivity. Additionally, undergraduates have been reluctant to share their depression with others in the lab, because they fear that they will be judged ( Cooper et al. , 2020b ). While these studies provide some insight into how depression may affect graduate students’ experience in research, there is much less information about how depression may affect graduate teaching.

In this study, we interviewed 50 PhD students in the life sciences who self-identified with having depression with the intent of answering two research questions that address gaps in the literature: 1) What specific aspects of graduate research and teaching affect PhD student depression? 2) How does PhD students’ depression affect their experience in research and teaching?

Student Interviews

This study was done under an approved Arizona State University Institutional Review Board protocol (no. 00011040).

In Fall 2019, we surveyed graduate students by sending an email out to program administrators of all life sciences graduate programs in the United States that are listed in U.S. News & World Report (2019) . Of the 259 graduate programs that we contacted, 75 (29.0%) program administrators agreed to forward our survey to students enrolled in their graduate programs. Of the 840 graduate students who participated in the survey, 459 (54.6%) self-identified as having depression based on general demographic questions on the survey. Of the 459 students who identified as having depression, 327 (71.2%) agreed to be contacted for a follow-up interview. In Summer 2020, we sent a recruitment email out to the 327 students who identified as having depression, asking to interview them about their experiences with depression in a PhD program. We specifically did not require that students be diagnosed with depression in order to participate in the interview study. We did not want to bias our sample, as mental health care is disproportionately unavailable to Black and Latinx individuals, as well as to those who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds ( Howell and McFeeters, 2008 ; Kataoka et al. , 2002 ; Santiago et al. , 2013 ). Of the students who were contacted, 50 PhD students (15.3%) enrolled across 28 life sciences PhD programs completed an interview.

The interview script was based on a previous interview script that we had developed, which successfully elicited what aspects of research affect depression in undergraduates and how depression affects their research ( Cooper et al. , 2020a ). Our previous work has shown that research experiences do not exclusively worsen depression, but that aspects of research can also help students manage their depression ( Cooper et al. , 2020a ). As such, our interview questions explored what aspects of research helped students manage their depression (positively affecting depression), and what aspects worsened students’ depression (negatively affecting depression). Additionally, we hypothesized that other prominent aspects of graduate school, such as teaching, would also affect PhD student depression and revised the interview script to include questions focused on examining the relationship between depression and teaching. We asked students what aspects of graduate research and teaching made their depression worse and what aspects helped them manage their depression. Participants were invited to come up with as many aspects as possible. We also asked how students perceived their depression affected their research and teaching. With the knowledge that we would be conducting interviews during summer of 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the pandemic had likely exacerbated graduate student depression ( Chirikov et al. , 2020 ), we directed students to not reference aspects of research and teaching that were uniquely related to the pandemic (e.g., teaching remotely or halted research) when discussing the relationship between research, teaching, and depression. We were specifically interested in aspects of teaching and research that affected student depression before the pandemic and would presumably affect student depression afterward. We conducted think-aloud interviews with four graduate students who identified as having depression to ensure that our questions would not offend anyone with depression and to establish cognitive validity of the interview script by ensuring that each student understood what each question was asking. The interview script was iteratively revised after each think-aloud interview ( Trenor et al. , 2011 ). A final copy of the interview script can be found in the Supplemental Material.

All interviews were conducted using Zoom by one of two researchers (L.E.G. or K.M.C.). The average interview time was about 45 minutes. After the interview, all participants were sent a short survey to collect their demographics and additional information about their depression (a copy of the survey can be found in the Supplemental Material). Participants were provided a small monetary gift card in exchange for their time. All interviews were deidentified and transcribed before analysis.

Interview Analysis

Three researchers (L.E.G., N.J.W., and K.M.C.) independently reviewed 12 of the same randomly selected interviews to explore each idea that a participant expressed and to identify recurring themes ( Charmaz, 2006 ). Each researcher took detailed analytic notes during the review. After, the three researchers met to discuss their notes and to identify an initial set of recurring themes that occurred throughout the interviews ( Saldaña, 2015 ). The authors created an initial codebook outlining each theme and the related description. Together, the authors then reviewed the same set of five additional interviews to validate the themes outlined in the codebook and to identify any themes that may have been missed during the initial review. The researchers used constant comparison methods to compare quotes from the interviews to each theme and to establish whether any quotes were different enough from a particular theme to warrant an additional code ( Glesne and Peshkin, 1992 ). Together, the three researchers revised the codebook until they were confident that it captured the most common themes and that no new themes were emerging. A final copy of the codebook can be found in the Supplemental Material. Two authors (L.E.G. and N.J.W.) used the final codebook to code five randomly selected interviews (10% of all interviews) and their Cohen’s κ interrater score was at an acceptable level (κ = 0.94; Landis and Koch, 1977 ). Then, one researcher (N.J.W.) coded the remaining 45 interviews. In the text, we present themes mentioned by at least 10% of interviewees and use quotes to highlight themes. Some quotes were lightly edited for clarity.

Author Positionality

Some of the authors identify as having depression and some do not. One author had completed a PhD program (K.M.C.), one author was in the process of completing a PhD program (L.E.G.), and two authors were undergraduates (N.J.W. and I.F.) at the time when the interviews and analyses took place.

Interview Participants

Fifty PhD students agreed to participate in the study. Students were primarily women (58%), white (74%), and continuing-generation college students (78%). Twelve percent of students were international students, and the average age of the participants was 28 years old. While 20% of students were unsure of their career goals, 32% of students planned to pursue a career in academia, and 24% were planning to pursue a career in industry. Students reported how severe they perceived their depression to be, on average, during the time they had spent in their PhD programs. Most students reported their depression as either moderate (50%) or severe (28%). Eighty percent of students reported being diagnosed with depression, and 74% reported receiving treatment for depression. Participants were at different stages in their PhD programs ranging from first year to sixth year or more. Three students had graduated between the time they completed the initial survey and when they participated in the interview in Summer 2020. Students self-reported their main research areas and represented a broad range, with ecology and evolutionary biology (26%), animal science (14%), molecular biology (14%), and neurobiology (10%) being the most common. Eighty-six percent of students had experience teaching undergraduates, primarily as teaching assistants (TAs), at the time of the interviews. All student demographics are summarized in Table 1 .

Participant demographics

The Effect of Research on Graduate Student Depression

Students more commonly identified ways that research negatively affected their depression than ways research positively affected their depression. Considering all factors that students listed and not just those that were most common, students on average listed two ways in which an aspect of research negatively affected their depression and one way in which an aspect of research positively affected their depression.

The most commonly reported aspect of research that worsened students’ depression was experiencing failures, obstacles, or setbacks in research. Specifically, students cited that failed experiments, failed research projects, and the rejection of manuscripts and grants was particularly difficult for their depression. Conversely, students highlighted that their depression was positively affected when they were able to make substantial progress on their research projects; for example, if they wrote part of a manuscript or if an experiment worked. Students also explained that accomplishing smaller or mundane research tasks was helpful for their depression, both because they felt as though they were checking off a box and also because it allowed them to focus on something other than the negative thoughts often associated with depression.

Students also highlighted that the unstructured nature of graduate research worsened their depression. Specifically, students described that, in graduate research, there are often no clear directions, sets of guidelines, or deadlines to help structure their day-to-day activities. Without this structure, students need to rely on their own motivation to outline goals, accomplish tasks, or seek help, which participants described can be difficult when one is experiencing a depressive episode. However, students also felt as though the unstructured nature of research benefited their depression, because it allowed for flexibility. Those who did not have frequent deadlines or strict schedules were able to not conduct research on days when they needed to recover from a depressive episode or schedule research around therapy or other activities that had a positive impact on their depression. Finally, students highlighted that their passion for their research was protective against depression. Their love for the subject of their research or thinking about how their work may have a positive impact on others could positively affect their motivation or mood.

Students described that their relationships with others in the lab also affected their depression. Specifically, if their mentors or others in their lab had unreasonable or overwhelming expectations of them, it could make them feel as though they would never be able to meet such expectations. Research also provides an environment for students to constantly compare themselves with others, both those in supervisory roles as well as peers. Notably, when students mentioned comparing themselves with others, this comparison never made them feel good about themselves, but was exclusively detrimental to their depression; they felt as though they would never be able to accomplish what others had already accomplished. Students’ relationships with their mentors also seemed to have a notable impact on their depression. Having a positive relationship with their mentors or a mentor who provided psychosocial support positively affected their depression, whereas perceiving a negative relationship with their mentors, particularly a mentor who provided consistently harsh or negative feedback, was detrimental. Students who had absent mentors or mentors who provided infrequent technical support and guidance also felt as though this situation worsened their depression, because it prevented or prolonged their success in research. Finally, students highlighted that conducting graduate research can be isolating, because you are often working on something different from those in the lab or because those outside graduate school cannot relate to the stress and struggles associated with research. However, in instances in which students were able to collaborate with others, this could be protective against depression, because it gave students a sense of comradery or validated their feelings about specific aspects of research. The most common research-related factors that students reported negatively and positively affected their depression and example student quotes of each factor are reported in Tables 2 and ​ and3, 3 , respectively.

Research-related factors that PhD students reported negatively affected their depression

Research-related factors that PhD students reported positively affected their depression

The Effect of Teaching on Graduate Student Depression

We asked all graduate students who had teaching experience ( n = 43) how teaching affected their depression. Graduate students more commonly identified ways that teaching positively affected their depression than ways teaching negatively affected their depression. On average, considering all factors that graduate students listed and not just those that were most common, participants listed two ways in which teaching positively affected their depression and one way in which teaching negatively affected their depression.

Graduate students most commonly highlighted that teaching provided positive reinforcement from undergraduates, which helped them manage their depression. This positive reinforcement came in multiple forms ranging from formal teaching evaluations to positive verbal comments from undergraduates about how good a graduate student was at teaching to watching undergraduates accomplish academic goals or grasp complex concepts. A subset of graduate students highlighted that teaching was good for their depression, because it was something they were passionate about or that they genuinely enjoyed. As such, it was a source of happiness, as was being able to collaborate and form friendships with other TAs or instructors. Some graduate students also acknowledged that they felt confident teaching, often because they had mastered content that undergraduates had not. However, this was not always the case; some graduate students highlighted that a lack of teaching training and preparation negatively affected their self-efficacy as instructors, which in turn exacerbated their depression. This was further exacerbated by the pressure that graduate students put on themselves to perform well as instructors. The potential to have a negative impact on undergraduates and their learning experiences could worsen students’ depression by increasing the stress surrounding their performance as a teacher. Additionally, some graduate students received negative reinforcement from undergraduates, in the form of negative comments on formal teaching evaluations or disrespectful behavior from undergraduates such as groans or eye rolls, which graduate students explained negatively affected their self-efficacy, further worsening their depression.

Students also highlighted that teaching could negatively affect their depression because it interfered with the time they felt they needed to be spending on research or added to the large number of responsibilities they had as graduate students. However, some students welcomed time away from research; teaching sometimes served as a distraction from research-related stressors. Students also highlighted that teaching is structured, which positively affected their depression. That is, there are concrete tasks, such as grading, that need to be accomplished or places that the graduate student needs to be during a specific time. This structure helped motivate them to accomplish teaching goals, even if they were feeling a lack of motivation because of their depression. The most common teaching-related factors that graduate students reported negatively and positively affected their depression and example student quotes for each factor are reported in Tables 4 and ​ and5, 5 , respectively.

Teaching-related factors that PhD students reported negatively affected their depression

a Forty-three out of the 50 students who participated in the study had experience teaching undergraduates either as a TA or as an instructor of record. We only considered the responses from the TAs with teaching experiences when calculating the percent of students who reported each factor.

Teaching-related factors that PhD students reported positively affected their depression

The Effect of Depression on Graduate Research

In the interviews, we asked graduate students how their depression affected their graduate research, if at all. They identified three primary ways in which depression could affect research, all of which were negative. The most common way depression affected research was interfering with students’ motivation, which in turn affected their productivity. Students described that their productivity was affected immediately, for example, struggling to execute daily tasks like collecting or analyzing data. However, graduate students described that their lack of motivation ultimately resulted in larger consequences, such as delays in getting papers submitted and published. In fact, some graduate students explicitly stated that they felt as though they would have been able to graduate earlier if they had not had depression. The second way in which depression affected graduate students’ research is that it interfered with their ability to focus or concentrate. Students primarily explained that the lack of focus did not delay their research but caused their research to be less enjoyable or made them frustrated because they had to expend additional mental energy to execute tasks. Depression also caused students to be less confident or overly critical of themselves. Specifically, if an experiment did not go right or they experienced rejection of a manuscript, they tended to internalize it and blame themselves. This lack of confidence often inhibited students’ abilities to make decisions about research or take risks in research. They described frequently second-guessing themselves, which made decisions and taking risks in research more difficult. The most common ways students reported that their depression affected their research and example student quotes are reported in Table 6 .

Self-reported ways that depression affected PhD students’ research or the student as a researcher

The Effect of Depression on Teaching

Graduate students described one positive way and two negative ways that depression affected their teaching. Students explained that, because they had experienced depression, they were more compassionate and empathetic toward the undergraduates in their courses. Specifically, they felt they could better understand some of the struggles that undergraduates experience and were sometimes more likely to be flexible or lenient about course requirements and deadlines if an undergraduate was struggling. However, graduate students reported that depression also negatively affected their teaching. Specifically, depression could cause graduate students to feel disconnected or disengaged from undergraduates. It could also cause graduate students to feel as though they had a lack of energy or felt down when teaching. The common self-reported ways that depression affected PhD students’ teaching and example quotes are reported in Table 7 .

Self-reported ways that depression affected PhD students’ teaching or the graduate student as an instructor

a Forty-three out of the 50 students who participated in the study had experience teaching undergraduates either as a TA or as an instructor of record. We only considered the responses from the TAs with teaching experiences when calculating the percent of students who reported each theme.

Despite the increasing concern about graduate student mental health among those in the scientific community ( Pain, 2018 ; “The Mental Health of PhD Researchers,” 2019; Puri, 2019 ), there is a lack of information about how specific aspects of science PhD programs affect students with depression. This is the first study to explicitly investigate which particular aspects of research and teaching affect depression among life sciences PhD students and how depression, in turn, affects graduate students’ experiences in research and teaching. Overall, graduate students highlighted factors related to teaching and research that both alleviated and exacerbated their symptoms of depression. Graduate students more commonly brought up ways that research negatively affected their depression, than ways that it positively affected their depression. Conversely, graduate students more commonly mentioned ways that teaching had a positive effect on their depression compared with a negative effect. The requirement and opportunity to teach differs among life sciences graduate programs ( Schussler et al. , 2015 ; Shortlidge and Eddy, 2018 ). As such, future research should investigate whether the amount of teaching one engages in during graduate school is related to levels of graduate student depression. Despite differences in how teaching and research affect student depression, this study unveiled factors that protect against or worsen depressive symptoms. Specifically, four overarching factors affecting graduate student depression emerged from the interviews: 1) Structure; 2) Positive and Negative Reinforcement; 3) Failure and Success; 4) Social Support and Isolation. We discuss here how each of these factors may positively and negatively affect graduate student depression.

One stark contrast between research and teaching is the amount of structure in each activity. That is, students expressed that research goals are often amorphous, that there are not concrete instructions for what needs to be accomplished, and that there is often no set schedule for when particular tasks need to be accomplished. Conversely, with teaching, graduate students often knew what the goals were (e.g., to help students learn), exactly what they needed to accomplish each week (e.g., what to grade, what to teach), and when and where they needed to show up to teach (e.g., a class meets at a particular time). Graduate students highlighted that a lack of structure, particularly in research, was detrimental for their depression. Their depression often made it difficult for them to feel motivated when there was not a concrete task to accomplish. Major depression can interfere with executive function and cognition, making goal setting and goal achievement particularly difficult ( Elliott, 1998 ; Watkins and Brown, 2002 ). In fact, research has documented that individuals with depression generate less specific goals and less specific explanations for approaching a goal than individuals who do not have depression ( Dickson and Moberly, 2013 ). As such, it may be particularly helpful for students with depression when an activity is structured, relieving the student from the need to articulate specific goals and steps to achieve goals. Students noted that the lack of structure or the flexibility in research was helpful for their depression in one way: It allowed them to better treat their depression. Specifically, students highlighted that they were able to take time to go to therapy or to not go into the lab or to avoid stressful tasks, which may be important for successful recovery from a depressive episode ( Judd et al. , 2000 ).

Compared with conducting research, many participants reported that the concrete tasks associated with teaching undergraduates were helpful for their depression. This is supported by literature that illustrates that concrete thinking, as opposed to abstract thinking, can reduce difficulty making decisions in individuals with depression ( Dey et al. , 2018 ), presuming that teaching often requires more concrete thinking compared with research, which can be more abstract. Additionally, cognitive-behavioral treatments for depression have demonstrated that developing concrete goals for completing tasks is helpful for individuals with depression ( Detweiler-Bedell and Whisman, 2005 ), which aligns with graduate students’ perceptions that having concrete goals for completing teaching tasks was particularly helpful for their depression.

Positive and Negative Reinforcement

Graduate students reported that the negative reinforcement experienced in research and teaching had a significant negative effect on their depression, while the positive reinforcement students experienced only in teaching had a positive effect. Notably, students did not mention how positive reinforcement affected their depression in the context of research. Based on student interviews, we predict that this is not because they were unaffected by positive reinforcement in research, but because they experienced it so infrequently. Drawing from behavioral theories of depression, the concept of response-contingent positive reinforcement (RCPR; Lewinsohn, 1974 ; Kanter et al. , 2004 ) helps explain this finding. As summarized by Kanter and colleagues (2004) , RCPR describes someone seeking a response and being positively reinforced; for example, graduate students seeking feedback on their research are told that what they have accomplished is impressive. Infrequent RCPR may lead to cognitive symptoms of depression, such as low self-esteem or guilt, resulting in somatic symptoms of depression, such as fatigue and dysphoria ( Lewinsohn, 1974 ; Martell et al. , 2001 ; Manos et al. , 2010 ). RCPR is determined by three factors. 1) How many potential events may be positively reinforcing to an individual. For example, some people may find an undergraduate scoring highly on an exam in a class they are teaching to be reinforcing and others may find that they only feel reinforced when an undergraduate explicitly compliments their teaching. 2) The availability of reinforcing events in the environment. If graduate students’ mentors have the ability to provide them with RCPR but are never able to meet with them, these reinforcing events are unavailable to them. 3) The instrumental behavior of an individual. Does the individual exhibit the behavior required to obtain RCPR? If graduate students do not accomplish their research-related tasks on time, they may not receive RCPR from their mentor. If individuals are not positively reinforced for a particular behavior, they may stop exhibiting it, further exacerbating the depressive cycle ( Manos et al. , 2010 ). Therefore, the lack of positive reinforcement in research may be particularly damaging to graduate students, because it may discourage them from completing tasks, leading to additional depressive symptoms. Conversely, teaching presents many opportunities for positive reinforcement. Every time graduate students teach, they have the opportunity to receive positive reinforcement from their students or to witness a student’s academic accomplishment, such as an undergraduate expressing excitement when they understand a concept. As such, it is not surprising that positive reinforcement was the primary teaching-related factor that graduate students reported helped with their depression. Despite the positive reinforcement of teaching for graduate students with depression, we are not suggesting that graduate students should take on additional teaching loads or that teaching should be viewed as the sole respite for graduate students with depression. Overwhelming students with increased responsibilities may counteract any positive impact that teaching could have on students’ depression.

Failure and Success

Failure and success affected student depression, but only in the context of research; contrary to research, students rarely mentioned concrete metrics for success and failure in teaching. While graduate students highlighted receiving positive or negative reinforcement from undergraduates, they did not relate this to being a “successful” instructor. It is unsurprising that graduate students did not mention failing or succeeding at teaching, given that experts in teaching agree that it is difficult to objectively evaluate quality teaching ( d’Apollonia and Abrami, 1997 ; Kember et al. , 2002 ; Gormally et al. , 2014 ). In fact, the lack of teacher training and knowledge about how to teach effectively negatively affected student depression, because it could cause students to feel unprepared as an instructor. Integrating teacher training into graduate programs has been championed for decades ( Torvi, 1994 ; Tanner and Allen, 2006 ; Schussler et al. , 2015 ); however, the potential for such training to bolster graduate student mental health is new and should be considered in future research. With regard to graduate students’ research, the concept of success and failure was far more concrete; students mentioned failing in terms of failed experiments, research projects, and rejected manuscripts and grant proposals. Successes included accepted manuscripts, funded grant proposals, and concrete progress on significant tasks, such as writing or conducting an experiment that yielded usable data. Failure has been shown to negatively affect depression among undergraduate researchers ( Cooper et al. , 2020a ), who are hypothesized to be inadequately prepared to experience failure in science ( Henry et al. , 2019 ). However, it is less clear how well prepared graduate students are to experience failure ( Simpson and Maltese, 2017 ). Drawing from cognitive theories of depression, depression is associated with dysfunctional cognitive schemas or dysfunctional thinking that can lead individuals with depression to have negative thoughts about the world, themselves, and the future and to interpret information more negatively than is actually the case (called negative information-processing biases; Beck, 1967 ; Beck et al. , 1979 ; Gotlib and Krasnoperova, 1998 ; Maj et al. , 2020 ). Related to failure, individuals with dysfunctional cognitive schemas may harbor beliefs such as if something fails at work (or in graduate research), they are a failure as a person or that a small failure can be as detrimental as a larger failure ( Weissman, 1979 ; Miranda and Persons, 1988 ). As such, setbacks in research may be particularly difficult for PhD students with depression. Graduate students in our study also mentioned how failing in research was often out of their control, particularly failure related to experiments and research projects. The extent to which one feels they can control their environment is important for mental health, and lower estimates of control have been hypothesized to be an important factor for depression ( Grahek et al. , 2019 ). Therefore, this feeling of being unable to control success in research may further exacerbate student depression, but this would need to be tested. Importantly, these findings do not imply that individuals with depression are unable to cope with failure; they only suggest that individuals perceive that failure in science can exacerbate their depression.

Social Support and Isolation

Graduate students reported that feelings of isolation in research could worsen their depression. Specifically, they highlighted that it can be difficult for their mental health when their friends outside graduate school cannot relate to their struggles in research and when others in their research group are not working on similar projects. One study of more than 1400 graduate students at a single university found that feeling isolated from fellow graduate students and faculty positively predicted imposter phenomenon ( Cohen and McConnell, 2019 ), defined as the worry that they were fooling others about their abilities and that their fraudulence would be exposed ( Clance and Imes, 1978 ), which is positively correlated with depression among college students ( McGregor et al. , 2008 ). Developing a positive lab environment, where undergraduates, graduate students, and postgraduates develop positive relationships, has been shown to positively affect undergraduates ( Cooper et al. , 2019 ) and may also positively affect graduate students who experience such feelings of isolation. Graduate students in this study described that both teaching and research had the potential to be a source for relationship development and social support. Students who described positive collaborative relationships in research and teaching felt this had a positive impact on their depression, which aligns with a review of studies in psychiatry concluding that being connected to a large number of people and having individuals who are able to provide emotional support by listening or giving advice is protective against depression ( Santini et al. , 2015 ), as well as a study that found that social support is protective against depression, specifically among the graduate population ( Charles et al. , 2021 ).

These four factors provide clear targets for graduate programs looking to improve the experiences of students with depression. For example, increasing structure in research could be particularly helpful for graduate students with depression. Ensuring that students have concrete plans to accomplish each week may not only positively impact depression by increasing structure, but ultimately by increasing a student’s success in research. Research mentors can also emphasize the role of failure in science, helping students realize that failure is more common than they may perceive. Increasing opportunities for positive reinforcement in teaching and research may be another avenue to improving student mental health. Providing students with appropriate teacher training is a first step to enhancing their teaching skills and potential for positive reinforcement from undergraduate students ( Schussler et al. , 2015 ). Additionally, teaching evaluations, a common form of both positive and negative reinforcement, are known to be biased and disadvantage women, People of Color, and those with non–English speaking backgrounds ( Fan et al. , 2019 ; Chávez and Mitchell, 2020 ) and arguably should not be used to assess teaching. In research, mentors can make an effort to provide positive feedback or praise in meetings in addition to critiques. Finally, to provide social support to graduate students with depression, graduate programs could consider creating specific initiatives that are related to supporting the mental health of graduate students in their departments, such as a support group for students to meet and discuss their experiences in graduate school and how those experience pertain to their mental health.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

In this study, we chose to only interview students with the identity of interest (depression), as is common with exploratory studies of individuals with underserved, underrepresented, or marginalized identities (e.g. Carlone and Johnson, 2007 ; Cooper and Brownell, 2016 ; Barnes et al. , 2017 , 2021 ; Downing et al. , 2020 ; Gin et al. , 2021 ; Pfeifer et al. , 2021 ). However, in future studies, it would be beneficial to also examine the experiences of individuals who do not have depression. This would provide information about the extent to which specific aspects of graduate research and teaching are disproportionately beneficial or challenging for students with depression. In this study, we did not explicitly examine whether there was a relationship between students’ identities and depression because of the small number of students in particular demographic groups. However, a theme that occurred rather infrequently (but is included in the Supplemental Material) is that discrimination or prejudice in the lab or academia could affect depression, which was reported exclusively by women and People of Color. As such, disaggregating whether gender and race/ethnicity predicts unique factors that exacerbate student depression is an important next step in understanding how to create more equitable and inclusive research and teaching environments for graduate students. Moreover, our sample included a significant number of students from ecology and evolutionary biology PhD programs, which may limit the generalizability of some findings. It is important to acknowledge potential subdisciplinary differences when considering how research may affect depression. Additionally, some of the factors that affect student depression, such as lack of teaching training and confidence in teaching, may be correlated with time spent in a graduate program. Future quantitative studies would benefit from examining whether the factors that affect student depression depend on the student’s subdiscipline and time spent in the graduate program. The primary focus of this study was the relationship between depression and graduate teaching/research. Many of the factors that emerged from the interviews are also associated with burnout ( Bianchi et al. , 2014 ; Maslach et al. , 2001 ). Burnout and depression are known to be highly related and often difficult to disaggregate ( Bianchi et al. , 2014 ). It was beyond the scope and design of this study to disaggregate which factors relate exclusively to the condition of burnout. Additionally, the interviews in this study were collected at a single time point. Thus, we are unable to differentiate between students who had depression before starting graduate school and students who experienced depression after starting graduate school. Future longitudinal studies could explore the effects of students’ experiences in research and teaching on their depression over time as well as on long-term outcomes such as persistence in graduate programs, length of time for degree completion, and career trajectory. This study identified a number of factors that graduate programs can address to benefit graduate student mental health, and we hope that future studies design and test interventions designed to improve the experiences of graduate students in teaching and research.

In this interview study of 50 life sciences PhD students with depression, we examined how graduate research and teaching affect students’ depressive symptoms. We also explored how depression affected graduate students’ teaching and research. We found that graduate students more commonly highlighted ways that research negatively affected their depression and ways that teaching positively affected their depression. Four overarching factors, three of which were related to both teaching and research, were commonly associated with student depression, including the amount of structure provided in research and teaching, failure and success, positive and negative reinforcement, and social connections and isolation. Additionally, graduate students identified depression as having an exclusively negative effect on their research, often hindering motivation, concentration, and self-esteem. However, they did note that depression made them more compassionate teachers, but also could cause them to have low energy or feel disconnected when teaching. This study provides concrete factors that graduate programs can target in hopes of improving the experiences of life sciences PhD students with depression.

Important Note

There are resources available if you or someone you know is experiencing depression and want help. Colleges and universities often have crisis hotlines and counseling services designed to provide students, staff, and faculty with treatment for depression. These can often be found by searching the university website. Additionally, there are free 24/7 services such as Crisis Text Line, which allows you to text a trained live crisis counselor (text “CONNECT” to 741741; Text Depression Hotline, 2019 ), and phone hotlines such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). If you would like to learn more about depression or depression help and resources near you, visit the Anxiety and Depression Association of American website: https://adaa.org ( Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 2019 ) and the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance: http://dbsalliance.org ( Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, 2019 ).

Acknowledgments

We are incredibly grateful to the 50 graduate students who were willing to share their personal experiences with us. We thank Sara Brownell, Tasneem Mohammed, Carly Busch, Maddie Ostwald, Lauren Neel, and Rachel Scott for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this work. L.E.G. was supported by an NSF Graduate Fellowship (DGE-1311230). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.

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PhD Depression (or just the blues?)

While many people will suffer ‘the blues’ during the PhD, in some cases the problem is more serious and can lead to or trigger clinical depression. In those cases, all the practical advice in the world won’t help and you need to seek medical attention. If you are worried about how you feel, and nothing seems to help, please visit your GP for advice. The website Beyond Blue has many excellent resources and information if you are worried about another colleague, family member or student and are not sure what to do.

If you are suffering from the blues, here’s some practical advice that might help. I’d like to thank Ümit Kennedy for sending in this post. Umit is a PhD candidate with the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University. You can connect with her via email at [email protected] or on social media using @umitkennedy. Although the days of her PhD blues have passed, she still uses these tips to get back on that horse every time she is knocked down.

I am well and truly in the middle of my three year PhD at an Australian University. Right now I’m experiencing some of the darkest days of my PhD journey so far. I am just so down. I hate my life. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve lost all my confidence. I feel like a total fraud. I’m feeling more and more distanced from ‘normal people’. (Mainly because it frustrates me more and more when people don’t understand what I’m doing or just can’t see the value in it.)

I’m calling what I’m feeling “PhD blues”.

Even having an article accepted, for example, in my experience, involves a pretty brutal reviews process in which everything including your ideas, argument and writing is criticized. So it can be hard to feel appropriately pleased about an achievement when the process of attaining it leaves you feeling lesser, little, unqualified, and no longer confident to submit anything ever again. Of course, you have to get over it and get back on that horse. Here are some of my practical tips to get out of the “PhD blues” and get on with it.

Achieve something

Do something that makes you feel like you have achieved something today. It might be as simple as cleaning the kitchen and cooking a beautiful meal. It might be organising your study, or wardrobe. It might be going for a walk or a run. It might be getting creative and making something. Weeding the garden, or in my case the pot plants on our little balcony. Attending to the piles of washing. Deep cleaning the bathroom. Grocery shopping. Putting everything up for sale on eBay. Finishing that novel that has been sitting on your bed-side-table for an eternity and finally giving it a place on the bookshelf. Anything that will make you feel like you have achieved something today. Sometimes just succeeding at being an adult (by doing any of the things mentioned above) is enough of an achievement to make me feel a bit better.

Treat yo’ self

By this stage of my PhD journey I have developed a reward system for myself. Whenever I have achieved a goal or worked particularly hard I reward myself by going to my favourite shopping center, buying a crème brulée late, and allowing myself to browse through my favourite stores. On a down day, treat yourself. Instead of treating yourself for achieving a specific goal, you are treating yourself for making it this far. And that is a pretty epic achievement worth celebrating!

Work on something completely different

I know this can feel like procrastination or a waste of time, but seriously, we both know that on a down day no amount of progress on the thesis is going to take place. Today would otherwise consist of many tears and watching YouTube or Netflix in bed. So instead, today is the day to develop those ideas for an article that has nothing to do with your research, but that you are excited about. It’s a day to write that blog post. Or as I’m trying to do now, write something practical that will feel like an achievement at the end of the day even though it hasn’t progressed my thesis. If writing is thinking, and I think it is, then you can’t go wrong.

Take this one step further and do it where people can see you. I love going to a busy coffee shop and writing. Even if what I’m writing is useless, I enjoy imagining what people are thinking when they see me: ‘ Is she a journalist? Is she writing a novel? ’ They’re probably not thinking any of those things, but it makes me feel like I’m interesting and like the image I portray is desirable. Look the part, feel the part! Am I right? Going to a busy coffee shop or library can also make you feel like you are part of the world, which I think is important when we are feeling isolated and alone.

Find the right people

I know how much my PhD is responsible for my feelings because life seems okay again when my husband gets home from work and we have some time together. Similarly, life feels okay again when I catch up with a good friend (who understands the academic/research journey). Or my parents, who I’m fortunate enough to say, also understand the academic/research journey. So much of my “blues” is to do with my isolation as a PhD student. The only community I have found is at conferences, and my only connection to those wonderful people is predominantly through social media. The right people are crucial. My hairdresser the other week was NOT the right person, and made me feel a million times worse when she had no idea what a PhD was and questioned why on earth I would want to spend so many years of my life “studying”. “ I’M NOT STUDYING! ” I wanted to scream. Find the right people and spend some time with them.

Break it down

Finally, after you have done all these things and feel like maybe you can face the world again, break it down. Break the rest of your PhD down into bite site, achievable pieces. Make an ACHIEVABLE timeline. Create a weekly or fortnightly to do list. Try to limit your to do list to one substantial task each week or fortnight. The goal of this exercise is to make you feel like “yeah, I can totally do this”. Next week all I have to do is *insert whatever you need to do next week* and I can totally do that! Feeling like you can achieve next week’s task (with all the tasks mapped out ahead of you until completion) will motivate you to keep going. Breaking it down and creating a timeline can feel really overwhelming, so make sure you’re ready for it – make sure you’ve given yourself some R&R time before you get stuck into planning. And yes, it will take you hours, but it’s not a waste of time, I promise. I revisit and re-create my to do list and timeline every time I’m feeling overwhelmed.

Don’t think about post PhD life

Recently, this is what has really got me down! My advice is don’t think about what will happen after the PhD. You will need to face this at some point, but that time has not come yet. Right now you need to get the freaking thing done! As my Dad has started saying (and as he was once told) “just get it done, it’s not your life’s work”. And as my husband reassured me the other night “the doors will start opening as you publish, teach, and build a network” and those things can’t really happen until I get more done. So the focus for now is getting more of the research and thesis done. Worry about the rest later.

Quit feeling guilty

So you haven’t really got anything done this week? Did you try? If you’re a PhD student the answer is most likely yes. (We tend to be a pretty hard-working, self-disciplined bunch.) Well, either you were tired and needed a break or you actually spent all the time where you feel like you were doing nothing thinking. Quit feeling guilty. Ideas do actually take time to develop and your brain never really switches off. Sometimes you just need to sit on things. I can guarantee that the periods where you are highly productive more than make up for the days (and sometimes weeks) where you feel you have made no progress. So quit feeling guilty and give yourself a break!

I wrote this article after searching “PhD Depression” for many hours. I could absolutely relate to everything I was reading, but I couldn’t find anything to help me get out of the dumps. So here is my experience of what has helped me.

These are my practical tips. Feel free to share yours.

Related posts

The process

PhD paralysis

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The Thesis Whisperer is written by Professor Inger Mewburn, director of researcher development at The Australian National University . New posts on the first Wednesday of the month. Subscribe by email below. Visit the About page to find out more about me, my podcasts and books. I'm on most social media platforms as @thesiswhisperer. The best places to talk to me are LinkedIn , Mastodon and Threads.

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How to Academia - A blog on academic selfhelp

• PhD and Postdoc Life / What's it like? / Work-Life Balance

Post PhD Submission Fatigue. Part 1

by Sarah Lang · Published 12/07/2021 · Updated 07/03/2022

As some of you might know, I submitted my PhD thesis a while ago. I knew about the supposed post-(PhD)-partum depression from stories, of course. I wasn’t sure how it was going to play out for myself. Now after more than a month, I’m definitely still in the deep of it and I’d like to share what I feel like and possibly discuss how others felt (if you’re willing to share). As of writing this article, I’m in a phase where I feel much better and get a little productive again and but then also fall back into a hole of being very tired (just for the record, so you know where I currently stand in the recovery process).

Having web-searched for the topic many times, I know that there are quite a few posts online but I found that most of them weren’t super helpful to me. I hope it might help someone to have my perspective as you’re going through it. In this post, I’m going to outline what Post-PhD-submission Fatigue is (according to me, my friends’ experiences and what I’ve found on the web), what I’ve heard about it and what people are saying about it. I will also set out to gather advice from “survivors”, so that we might even be able to provide some guidance if anybody comes across this post feeling lost. However, the personal experiences stories and the advice will probably mostly go into part two of this blog. Without further ado, let’s get into it…

What is Post PhD Submission Fatigue?

It’s a name (or even set of names) people have come up with to describe the feeling you get after the submission of your PhD thesis. Unlike what you’d think, most people do feel relieved but not in the happy-happy way they had imagined. Most people end up feeling extremely drained and like they’ve fallen into a void, lost perspective, don’t have that one big life goal to work towards, etc.

Some say it feels like burnout…

Some say it feels like burnout, some have even related it to symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress . In order to think through whether this classification makes sense, let me start with listing a few commonly mentioned symptoms of both (so you can check if you think any apply to you). If you feel that they do, don’t jump to conclusions. But if you very strongly related to them, make sure to reach out to a therapist or counselor as soon as possible. These issues can be quite serious and you shouldn’t feel “stupid” asking for help if you need it!

As symptoms for burnout, lots of web sources ( for example ) commonly list exhaustion (physical and mental), being annoyed at the world and your life (cynicism, feeling useless, feeling things don’t make sense or are pointless), lack of concentration, being easily irritated and missing more and more time from work due to sick days.

Watch out for common indicators of too much stress: Sleep, digestion, headaches

Additionally, common indicators of too much stress like issues with sleep, digestion or headaches can come with the package. These are all indicators you’re suffering from overwork and should see a doctor, therapist or at least dial down a little (reduce work, take a vacation, etc.) If the symptoms persist for a longer period of time that’s a sign that something’s off and you should seek help.

Personally, despite feeling super tired, I wouldn’t say that any of those common indicators of stress (or burnout) apply to how I’m feeling at all…

A further indicator you might be suffering from burnout – maybe most importantly -, is depression. For me personally, I can only relate to very few of those burnout symptoms but absolutely not depression (though I’m not a stranger to that, so I know how it feels). I have no indicators of too much stress.

I do have bursts of stress and anxiety but feel good and happy overall. Mostly I’m just very tired. The number of work hours I can reliably get in a day are about 3-4 maximum and notably, I get overwhelmed much more quickly than usual. I’ve been trying to conceptualize what it feels like over the last few weeks and I think the most obvious problem for me currently is being very “jumpy” when it comes to work. I get overwhelmed when to-dos pile up. I get stressed and panicked really quickly. But I can also shut work out much better than usual (maybe due to lack of energy or the overwhelm with it just being way too high).

I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself with symptoms of burnout because I have had tendencies of (seriously) working too much since my early youth. However, I also have always really enjoyed work and (over-?)used it as a coping mechanism to deal with other things. Despite the last weeks of the PhD pre-submission phase being very stressful with little room for myself, they coincided with some post-lockdown reopenings. I made the most of that. I worked at the university café, went to the reopened bouldering gym and met a few friends. Despite the stress, I have profoundly happy memories from that time. However, I feel that the past four weeks (ergo the first weeks post submission) have been somewhat of a blur. Time seemed to pass very fast.

Right after the submission, I had to prep getting to my US fellowship so it was quite busy. I was stressed but also still in the go-getter mindset from before the submission. I actually really like this mindset and I hope I can eventually re-cultivate it in the future. I wasted a lot less time on non-essentials and was very focused when I worked. Once I had arrived in the US, there was some jetlag and adjusting to the time zone change. Although, weirdly, even after more than four weeks, I still start yawning in the early evening. I’m starting to suspect this might be a problem of low blood sugar due to intermittent fasting (which I had been trying but will probably discontinue as I don’t really see the benefit).

When I first arrived in the US, I couldn’t look at any work at all in the beginning. I wouldn’t open my email or even go near anything work related. My memory has been horrible for weeks (getting much better now in month 2 post submission). I needed to write everything down and at the same time was continuously panicked I might have forgotten someting or missed a deadline. Despite the fact that I currently don’t even have all that many meetings or deadlines I could miss. So I feel that I was a bit too hyperfocused on what I had to get done.

Post Traumatic Stress versus Post Dissertation Stress?

Now let’s just take a quick look at symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress. Which some people have related to their own Post Dissertation Stress ( read more here ). These, however, are quite a bit more severe than what I have been experiencing, even though some people have drawn the parallel (and I can see why). Common symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress are being easily frightened or getting anxious, always on your guard for danger, possibly connected to self-destructive behaviour (like drinking too much, driving recklessly, etc.) Furthermore, trouble sleeping and concentrating, being irritable, angry or aggressive and feeling guilty.

I get why people would relate what they feel to Post Traumatic Stress because I also felt that I got disproportionately triggered by, say work, responsibilities, emails, totally normal to-dos (like taking the trash out). The smallest things put me in a “frenzy” if you want to call it that. This might have also been a reason for my extremely bad memory during the time because I overreacted so much to everything that my brain was constantly too busy stressing out and couldn’t focus (and commit stuff to memory, a process which is reduced during high-strss moments). The bad memory really got to an almost dysfunctional state. I had never experienced anything like that before. And then not being in full control of my brain stressed me even more (like a vicious cycle). But I guess I got through it alright and the memory part is really not an issue anymore now.

From what I hear, people are trying to move the concept of Post Traumatic Stress away from being reserved only to huge triggers (like having been in a war, victim of rape, etc.) – but I’m not sure I like it being applied to what I have felt. I think that I’m still in such a privileged situation. I’d say maybe it’s my body being confused at the stress dissipating after an extremely high-stress time. Maybe the symptoms are similar. I’m not sure I’d want to call this Post Traumatic Stress though (btw, in case you have been wondering… yes, it was known as PTSD, i.e. disorder but the “disorder” part was removed from many mental things which aren’t actually disorder.. like Autism etc.).

More practical advice is coming to you in the next post!

So yeah, that’s my story and my take on how to conceptualize it. This was a long post already, so I’ll save everything else I’ve written down for the next part. Maybe I even have enough material for two more posts, so remember to check this blog for more related content 🙂 What you can expect is, among others, further descriptions of possible symptoms and advice for how to deal with them. How long we’ve heard that it can take (or have experienced ourselves). Some experiences from others. What information we have found for making sense of your feelings (why are you feeling like this, what could cause it?).

That’s it for now. So long and thanks for all the fish!

Cite this blog post Sarah Lang (2021, July 12). Post PhD Submission Fatigue. Part 1. Epigrammetry . Retrieved June 21, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.58079/og7u

Tags: anxiety burnout depression fatigue feeling tired fellowship Post PhD Submission Fatigue Post Traumatic Stress

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Clinical psychology

Psychotherapy, personality, what is post dissertation depression.

As a BetterHelp affiliate, we may receive compensation from BetterHelp if you purchase products or services through the links provided.

We will also discuss what are the possible causes of post dissertation depression, and how one can cope with post dissertation depression.

It is not an official diagnosis but it is commonly a term that is used to refer to the sense of emptiness, anxiety, and low moods that college scholars usually experience after their dissertation defence is over. 

Post dissertation depression often occurs when the dissertation defence ends and all the schedules are dropped, and the scholar no longer has a goal that they drive towards as well as framework for their day to day lives, it can leave the individual feeling a little out of place. 

What causes post dissertation depression?

Post dissertation depression typically occurs due to an identity crisis where the individual has attained their goal and they are struck with a “what now?” question about the next steps of their professional life. 

The lack of stimuli in their life or a driving force of a goal- they are given to think about themselves, their friendships and relationships, and their future can lead a scholar to feel worried, anxious, and as this aggravate it can lead the scholar to feel hopeless and helpless. 

Mike Rucker, a writer for unstickme, also writes that one of the major causes of post dissertation depression is that once one has attained their goal, they are faced with a period of transition that they might be prepared for. 

How to cope with post success depression?

Celebrate and rest.

First, what you can do after you have achieved your goals is to celebrate the success of the goal or at the least the fact that you have reached the finish line. 

Go on a sabbatical

Accept the uncertainty, reaffirm values or seek out new set of values .

By taking the time to explore your life and surroundings, to uncover a new set of values that is authentic to yourself. 

Go out and Actively seek positive experiences

Plan a new goal.

Let your new goal be based on your new values and beliefs that you have developed over the course of the new goal. 

Take some time to work out the what’s, the whys, and the hows- and envision how you might build on the success you’ve already achieved. 

Develop a Support System

If you are struggling with depression, you will also want to develop a strong support system or have at least one person you can rely on for support. 

You might benefit from joining a support group specifically for depression and/or anger. In support groups, you’re likely to find yourself spending time with people who completely understand your situation.

If you are already in therapy, talking to your therapist about your feelings and the confusion you feel and the times that this lack of grounding has hurt you and others can be a good place to start. 

Your therapist can help you learn strategies on how to deal with your emotions and also help you make lifestyle changes on how to manage them more effectively.

In this blog we have discussed what post dissertation depression is. 

FAQ related to post dissertation depression

Does life get better after phd.

No, life does not get better after PhD. infact, it might get significantly harder  because most people go through what is known as post dissertation depression which is caused by a sudden identity crisis caused after one attains a goal they have work for so long that they no longer know where they now stand as a professional as well as in their personal life. 

What to do after finishing the thesis?

First, what you can do after you have achieved your thesis is to celebrate the success of the goal or at the least the fact that you have reached the finish line. 

Now, after you celebrate- go out with friends, go on vacation, throw a party, go on a tour etc- take time to rest. 

Why are PhD students so depressed?

Many PhD students are often trapped in a cycle of continued work, research, writing, and back to work. This often leads them to forsake their social life and neglect their own selves. 

This lack of balance between work and play often leads to burnout and eventually depression in students who are trying to complete their thesis. 

Nikole. Patson. How I recovered from tenure-track burnout. Science. Retrieved on 24th April 2022. https://www.science.org/content/article/how-i-recovered-tenure-track-burnout

Mike Rucker. How To Handle The Post Ph.D. Blues. Unstick me. Retrieved on 24th April 2022. https://unstick.me/handle-post-ph-d-blues/

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Feeling lost and depressed after thesis submission

I submitted my thesis on September 13, which also happened to be my 26th birthday, so double celebration, but now I am feeling the post-thesis submission blues. I try hard to snap out of it, but I can't. I had a great PhD overall. My supervisors and the research group are great people, and I have really enjoyed and been passionate about the research I have been doing. 90% of the time, I felt happy at work and had plenty of passion for it. I guess I wasn't prepared for the feelings I would get after the thesis submission. It was a great feeling submitting but then, about 2 days later, I realised I didn't have a job lined up and would have to live off my savings. My supervisor says I have done a great job with my PhD, so I will likely get through with minor corrections. Still, I'm starting to get negative thoughts about what the future holds and if all will work out well. It is affecting me to the point that I feel depressed and don't have the energy or motivation to do much, which has been building up for the last two weeks. I have booked in to speak to a counsellor, and they will probably contact me today or tomorrow. I think I do have plenty I can feel proud of. I've had three publications so far out of my thesis, submitted a paper to a journal yesterday, and am also attending a conference next month where I will be presenting along with 5 others in the new investigator session, which is a significant achievement in itself. I will soon be a doctor and have had many other achievements throughout my candidature. Still, I can't stop feeling crap, knowing my future is uncertain. I am applying for jobs hoping something will come up, but it has only been a few weeks, so I probably need to be realistic and give it some time. I guess because I am on the autism spectrum, that plays a part in why I often feel the way I do. I have an illusion that everyone is constantly watching me or thinking bad things about me and get paranoid about that, and I also find it very hard to stop comparing myself to others. When someone has an achievement of some sort, I feel jealous and like I am inferior compared to them, when in fact, I most likely am not, and I should be feeling happy for them. Indeed, I can't predict what the future holds for me, and I know deep down I can handle anything as I have always been triumphant through difficult times in the past and have much resilience. I guess I am looking for advice from people on some strategies I can put in place to change my mindset and get rid of all the negative thoughts so I can be my usual happy self again and feel like I did while I was working on my thesis. After submitting my thesis, I am going through a major life change. Before submitting it, I had a goal, a routine, and a set social interaction with peers who respected and admired me. There was predictability and comfort in my life. Does anyone have advice for me to change my way of thinking, so I don't feel depressed about things? Thanks.

Hey Jesse - I get it, and have had similar experiences. Have you tried to get any external support? I also used a therapist at times. I had a PhD coach who really helped me get through the Viva and my final pushes! I can make recommendations if useful? The fact that you've published 3 times means you are going to smash your minor corrections, if they happen..

Hi, Jesse1309 You were on adrenaline, go go go for the many months. Suddenly it's all done and you are coping with the loss of purpose and routine. I suggest you go on a holiday to properly unwind. Then if you feel ready, plan your day. Maybe set aside x hours thinking/looking/applying for job, if routine and predictability are that important to you. Then rest for the rest of the day. Congratulations on submitting! it is a huge milestone.

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Assessing the role of depression-related stigma in depression care in Malawi

Add to collection, downloadable content.

• Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Epidemiology
• Globally, depression is prevalent and burdensome. People with depression that hold stigmatizing beliefs related to their condition are at higher risk of never seeking treatment and/or falling out of treatment after initial engagement, posing significant risks to depression recovery. Research in the U.S. found a reduction in stigma after patients engaged in supportive counseling compared to other treatment methods for depression. There has not been much research on mental health stigma in Malawi. Therefore, using data from the Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Partnership (SHARP) for Mental Health Capacity Building scale-up trial, this dissertation expands upon ongoing depression-related implementation science research efforts in the region by exploring the role of stigma during depression care. Patients in the cohort (N=743) were largely treatment-naïve and had depressive symptoms indicated by the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. This dissertation aimed to 1) estimate the effect of baseline anticipated treatment-related stigma on the 3-month probability of depression remission and 2) estimate the association between referral to clinically appropriate problem-solving based therapy and internalized depression stigma three months later. We found that the probability of achieving depression remission at the 3-month interview among participants with high anticipated treatment-related stigma (0.31; 95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 0.23, 0.39)) was 10 percentage points lower than among patients who had low or neutral levels of anticipated treatment-related stigma (risk: 0.41; 95% CI: 0.36, 0.45; RD: -0.10; 95% CI: -0.19, -0.003). In our analysis of the effect of counseling referral on 3-month probability of having high internalized depression stigma, we found that the probability of high internalized stigma was 33 percentage points greater (95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 0.16, 0.50) among patients who were referred to counseling (0.43; 95% CI: 0.32, 0.55) compared to those who were not referred to counseling (0.10; 95% CI: -0.10, 0.30). Taken together, the results from this dissertation highlight 1) the critical role that treatment-related stigma plays in the path to depression recovery, 2) the lack of adequate solutions currently being implemented to address internalized stigma during depression treatment, and 3) the potential impact of an intervention targeting depression-related stigma among patients receiving depression care in Malawi.
• Public health
• Mental health
• https://doi.org/10.17615/0gj3-ya05
• Dissertation
• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Pence, Brian W
• Gaynes, Bradley N
• Hill, Sherika
• Aiello, Allison E
• Keil, Alexander
• Doctor of Philosophy
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School

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Peer support for anyone struggling with a depressive disorder

I cannot write my thesis.

I'm going through a rough time recently.

A little background: my country's economy in in shreds, I'm unemployed and living with my mother at the age 26. I don't have a father. My mother's income is shit and she's getting older and I feel guilty for being unable to help her. We're really fucked because, well, long story short, we need to move out from our current home as fast as we can - and real estate in my city is just insanely expensive, we've been searching for something else that matches our needs but it's almost impossible to find. It's driving both of us crazy and taking all out spare time. I don't sleep at night thinking about it.

All I can do is try to finish my graduation as soon as possible while dealing with all these worries, and also with my lifelong depression. I've always had depression. I have my ups and downs, I take meds, go to therapy and all, but the last couple of weeks it's been worse than ever. I just... Cannot do things. I CANNOT. My head has this productivity fog. I don't want to wake up in the morning. It seems like I'm in this reality where the atmosphere is so much more dense than the normal. Moving is tiring. Don't even talk about thinking, it's a struggle.

The thing is: I have to submit my partial report on my thesis tomorrow. This is my final work to finally get my diploma after 6 years in uni. But. I cannot write it. I simply cannot. I look at the screen and nothing makes sense. I am desperate. I cannot read a single page of any text. I look at it and it seems I know nothing. I feel dumb and idiot and stupid and a failure. I already delayed it a whole year! All my friends are so goddamn smart and did what they had to do and I cannot! I SIMPLY CANNOT!

My professor advisor tried calling me earlier and I just couldn't answer. I've been blankly looking at my computer screen for days. I just want the struggle to end. I feel I'm childish and irresponsible. I don't know what to do.

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Postpartum depression among adolescent mothers: examining and treating low-income adolescents with symptoms of postpartum depression public deposited.

• Postpartum depression (PPD) among adult women is a prevalent and impairing problem, with evidence suggesting risk of adverse consequences for mothers and their infants. Few studies have investigated the problems of PPD among adolescents; however, both the emergence during adolescence of increased risk for depression among girls compared to boys and the prevalence of adolescent pregnancy suggest that this is a topic worthy of increased attention. The present thesis examines correlates of adolescent PPD, as well as an intervention for low-income adolescent mothers with symptoms of PPD. Study 1 investigated the relationship between depressive symptom severity and potential individual vulnerability and social context factors among a sample of adolescent mothers (N=102). Results indicate that adolescent PPD symptoms are associated with the number of negative life events, perceived discrimination, deficits in social support, anxiety symptom severity, perceived stress, impaired bonding and deficits in interpersonal effectiveness and emotion regulation. The best fitting model from the stepwise regression analyses indicated that perceived stress and anxiety symptom severity were the best predictors of adolescent PPD symptom severity. Study 2 examined the feasibility and preliminary outcomes of a behavioral skills training group intervention, based on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), among adolescents with PPD (N=24) recruited from both a public health parent education program and a specialty obstetrics clinic for adolescent mothers. Findings suggest the intervention was both feasible and associated with improvement in mental health and functional domains. Together these studies indicate that a number of domains are related to adolescent PPD symptoms, particularly anxiety symptom severity and perceived stress, and a DBT skills group may be effective in reducing symptoms of PPD, as well as other areas of difficulty for adolescent mothers.
• Kleiber, Blair Vinson
• Psychology and Neuroscience
• Dimidjian, Sona
• Park, Bernadette
• Arch, Joanna
• Mollborn, Stefanie
• University of Colorado Boulder
• perceived stress
• Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
• intervention
• behavioral skills
• Dissertation
• In Copyright
• English [eng]

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