Graduate Study and depression
This was very interesting to me, as I too was a physics PhD student, and depression played a huge role in it taking me 10 years to finish.
"I might not have felt so alone had I known how many people struggle with mental health issues in academia. A 2015 study at the University of California Berkeley found that 47% of graduate students suffer from depression, following a previous 2005 study that showed 10% had contemplated suicide. A 2003 Australian study found that that the rate of mental illness in academic staff was three to four times higher than in the general population, according to a New Scientist article. The same article notes that the percentage of academics with mental illness in the United Kingdom has been estimated at 53%."
This statistics horrify me. This is something more than an epidemic to me. It is an effect of current mechanism and politics in academia around the world. And when I think about my own experiences and multiply it by the given data, I can't even comprehend the image of ocean of pain and misery it invokes. It is plainly wrong.
This quote really resonated with me:
@Celaeno I do wonder whether it's better in Europe than the US. My sense is that, at least in physics, European PhD programs provide closer guidance and possibly more humane working hours.
@squib, I'm not so sure about that. Hearing about experiences of my colleagues doing a PhD on the Polish university + having a friend in France who takes part in EU Marie Curie programme, I clearly see that they don't receive any support regarding mental health. The impact of it, of course varies from person to person, but the whole environment seems toxic to me. The stories of how faculty and even supervisors take advantage of PhD students, as if they were a free labour, while they have to scrap for any income, is unbelievable.
On one side I have ambition to contribute to my field, but on the other I know I don't perform very well under pressure, because of my depression and anxiety issues. I don't want to make a hazardous decision which risks my health, but if that's the world standard necessary to obtain this degree, what can one do if not to join the rat race?
@Celaeno I have to say, I wasn't thinking specifically of the mental health support aspect, and it can be very different in different disciplines! And exploitation of graduate student labor seems a pretty standard part of academia, unfortunately.
One thing you might do is take some time off from school to figure out how/whether to proceed. While it wasn't something I planned, I did work 7 years between my undergraduate degree and starting full-time graduate study. I think that did help in a lot of ways: more perspective on life vs. academics, more focused consideration of my career options before starting the program. And once I graduated, being older with more experiences helped keep me from being consumed by the inevitable (and always petty) politics of my institution. I didn't do things out of fear in the way I sometimes see in younger colleagues (who can't imagine doing anything else).
