By Rachel Bergeron, PhD student at l’Université de Sherbrooke

Many might have heard the infamous statistic: around 40% of graduate students are depressed. Graduate students are more than 6 times as likely to experience depression and anxiety as are the general population (Evans et al. 2018). The numbers are even greater in women and in transgender and gender non-conforming people, among other visible and invisible minorities.

Why is graduate school, or academia, so destructive for mental health? I am only a few years into a PhD, but here is my attempt at piecing together what have been some of the greatest challenges for my friends, colleagues, and I, with some of the tips and advice I have received that have been helpful.

1. Research often brings highly variable schedules.

Some weeks are filled mainly with reading and writing at your own pace, others with long hours of field or laboratory work, others with 12-hour days of presentations and networking. Outside of classes and conferences, it is just about entirely up to you to manage your time. This freedom is, in many ways, a huge privilege graduate school offers. It allows the early birds and the night owls both to take advantage of their most productive times of the day, among other obvious advantages. It does, however, come with the challenge of managing and motivating yourself.

The undergraduate experience is punctuated by a series of short-term goals: assignments, midterm exams, final exams. A series of non-negotiable, short-term deadlines. All to be forgotten once handed in. Breaks were provided between semesters, and you could hopefully tackle the next one refreshed. Then we become graduate students, and the multiple, short-term deadlines become one especially long-term one. No more clear assignments, unavoidable deadlines and mandatory breaks, for better or worse.

My personal approach to this one has been to-do lists, and lots of them. Some will find it dizzying, but I keep a master to-do list with the next dozen tasks on my docket, broken up into small manageable bites. Every morning, I select a few to become my objectives for the day. The key to this strategy is to keep tasks small, specific and measurable, and to limit myself to 2 or 3 a day. Small bites mean a few successes every day, and a real feeling of accomplishment by the end of it, hopefully.

2. Graduate school also comes with far less feedback than undergraduate school did.

Expectations are often unclear, even unspoken, and in many cases, feedback is relatively scarce and only comes in the form of constructive criticism. The absence of comments is to mean a job well done. Recognition is rare. All of this is understandably difficult. Moreover, I feel that many academics tie a lot of their identities to their research, such that it can be especially difficult not to take constructive criticism of their work personally. Not to mention academics are extraordinary critics.

There are as many ways to deal with all of this as there are researchers. I have found that, as intimidating as it can be at first, there is always feedback to be found if you ask for it. Of course, your research director may be the first place to look, but your advisory committee, and even lab mates with a bit more experience than you can be great resources. It is also good to remember that research is what you do, not who you are. Constructive criticism is meant to be just that, constructive. Some are less delicate in their delivery than others, but the objective remains to point you in the right direction, to help you improve on your work. You would not be here if an entire team of researchers far more experienced than you did not believe you have everything it takes.

3. The office can be wherever you are.

Although, again, there are obvious advantages to this, it has perhaps been my greatest challenge. Given that most of what I do only requires my laptop, there is officially nothing stopping me from working every waking hour, and this field unfortunately tends to encourage it. Publish or perish. More hours could mean more papers, more grants, more lines on your resume. There are limits, however. Proper sleep, a balanced diet, physical activity and rest are all crucial for motivation, concentration, retention, and of course mental health. Recovery from burnout is measured in years.

So, this last piece of advice may be the most important: take breaks. The same way an athlete needs rest to recover, build muscle and prevent injury, we need rest to consolidate knowledge, encourage creativity and replenish our stores of attention and motivation. To sort through all of our mental post-it notes. Your well rested self is capable of accomplishing twice as much in half the time as your exhausted self anyway. For the most productive days, all work-related tasks should be banished from your evenings and weekends, as much as possible. Easy peasy.

I have pinpointed these as my and many of my colleagues’ three greatest challenges as graduate students, but I could go on for a good while. Some honourable mentions include all of the challenges related to living well below the poverty line well into your late twenties, potentially thirties. Financial stress is one of the greatest hurdles of graduate school for many, and the costs of a late start on paying off debt, saving and investing can be felt for decades. Not to mention the damage unhealthy relationships with colleagues and research directors can also cause, particularly ones punctuated by the unbalanced power dynamics still often experienced by women and any and all visible and invisible minorities in academia. That is another topic entirely, one which would deserve its own blog post (at the very least).

Evans, T., Bira, L., Gastelum, J. et al. Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education. Nature Biotechnology 36, 282–284 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4089