The upside to depression: undergraduates benefit from an instructor revealing depression in a large-enrollment physiology course.

Abstract

Undergraduates with depression report that they would benefit from science role models who also have depression. If biology instructors who have depression reveal it to their students, it could help meet this need. However, it is unknown how instructors revealing their depression would impact all undergraduate science students, not just those with depression, and whether it would cause some students to have a negative perception of the instructor. To address this gap, an instructor of an undergraduate physiology course revealed her depression to the whole class in less than 3 s on two occasions. Undergraduates were surveyed about whether they remembered the instructor revealing depression, whether they perceived it to be appropriate, and what impact it had on them. Of the 289 undergraduates who participated in the survey, 90.6% remembered the instructor revealing her depression. Seventy-two percent of those students reported that the instructor revealing depression had a positive impact on them, 21.3% reported no impact, and 6.7% reported a negative impact. Women were disproportionately likely to report that the instructor revealing depression had a positive impact on the student/instructor relationship and the instructor's approachability. LGBTQ+ students were disproportionately likely to report that the instructor revealing depression had a positive impact on the extent the classroom feels inclusive and students with more severe depressive symptoms were more likely to report that it normalized depression broadly and in the context of science. This work adds to recent studies highlighting the potentially positive impact of instructors revealing their concealable stigmatized identities to undergraduates in class.NEW & NOTEWORTHY This research highlights the potential for instructors with depression to have a positive impact on students in their college science courses.