Aspects of research and teaching that impact anxiety and depression among life sciences Ph.D. students

Abstract

In 2018, researchers declared a graduate student mental health crisis after finding that graduate students are significantly more likely to report depression and anxiety compared to their counterparts in the general public. Calls to improve the mental health of science graduate students followed, but no studies examined how science Ph.D. programs specifically affect student mental health. In response, we conducted a set of interview studies; we interviewed 83 life sciences Ph.D. students from over 30 institutions to identify what specific aspects of research and teaching affect Ph.D. student mental health. In turn, we examined how students perceive their depression or anxiety disorders affect their graduate research and teaching. Using inductive coding, we identified factors that either alleviate or exacerbate student anxiety, as well as student depression. With regard to depression, graduate students more commonly mentioned factors related to research that exacerbated their depression and factors related to teaching that helped their depression. This was also found to be true for student anxiety. We identified four overarching aspects of graduate school that commonly influenced student mental health: 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. Students described anxiety as something that caused them to be meticulous in their research and teaching, but sometimes caused them to spend excessive time on research and teaching tasks. We built upon these interview studies by conducting a national survey study of Ph.D. students with depression and anxiety disorders, the results of which will be highlighted. This work pinpoints specific aspects of graduate school that PhD programs can target to improve mental health among life sciences graduate students.