A Longitudinal Study of Mental Wellbeing in Students in Aotearoa New Zealand Who Transitioned Into PhD Study.

Taylor Winter,Richie Poulton,Jesse Kokaua,Damian Scarf,Megan Gollop,Karen Tustin,Nicola Taylor,Benjamin C Riordan,John A Hunter

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.659163

Abstract

Journal editorials, career features, and the popular press commonly talk of a graduate student mental health crisis. To date, studies on graduate student mental health have employed cross-sectional designs, limiting any causal conclusions regarding the relationship between entry into graduate study and mental health. Here, we draw on data from a longitudinal study of undergraduate students in Aotearoa New Zealand, allowing us to compare participants who did, and did not, transition into PhD study following the completion of their undergraduate degree. Using multilevel Bayesian regression, we identified a difference in mental wellbeing between those who entered PhD study and those who did not. This difference, however, was largely due to those not entering PhD study displaying an increase in mental wellbeing. Participants that entered PhD study displayed a small decrease in mental wellbeing, with the posterior distribution of the simple effect heavily overlapping zero. This latter finding was orders of magnitude smaller than one might expect based on previous cross-sectional research and provides an important message; that a marked drop in mental health is not an inevitable consequence of entering graduate study.

Highlights

There is a plethora of editorials on graduate student mental health in high-impact journals, many with alarming titles such as “Caught in a trap” (Sohn, 2016), “Paying graduate school’s mental toll” (Arnold, 2014), and “The tortuous truth” (Woolston, 2019)
We focused on the 269 participants who transitioned into PhD study between the baseline survey (2011) and the follow-up survey (2014)
Those who did not transition into a PhD had a mean wellbeing of 49.9 (SD = 7.8), very similar to those who transitioned to PhD who had a mean of 49.7 (SD = 7.6)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

There is a plethora of editorials on graduate student mental health in high-impact journals, many with alarming titles such as “Caught in a trap” (Sohn, 2016), “Paying graduate school’s mental toll” (Arnold, 2014), and “The tortuous truth” (Woolston, 2019). 41% reported moderate to severe anxiety and 32% reported moderate to severe depression After comparing these rates to a general population sample, the authors concluded that there is a mental health crisis in the graduate student population (Evans et al, 2018). We compare the mental wellbeing of participants who did, and did not, transition into PhD study following the completion of their undergraduate degree

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Participants

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

ETHICS STATEMENT