I'll just toss into this mix:
1. Very early in the article it is stated "Although this is a convenience sample in which respondents who have had a history of anxiety or depression may have been more apt to respond to the survey, the data should prompt both academia and policy makers to consider intervention strategies." NO, it should encourage a REAL study with REAL controls to replace this junk science. And some wonder why social sciences are called "soft science".
2. This "study" is apparently looking at graduate students without also looking at all students on the campus, so it is flawed by design. The word "undergraduate" does not even appear in it, the authors instead choosing to make comparisons to "the general population", a term which is not even defined in the paper and is a dubious cohort comparison. The proposed "intervention strategies" may or may not be unique to the graduate population, and one could certainly devise better ones looking at the entire campus population to find the lowest hanging fruit (most impact for effort). BTW, at our local University (primarily undergraduate) the student mental health services are so backed up they have a months-long waiting list and I hear this is not uncommon at other schools.
3. Is there any evidence this proportion has grown or decreased over time? I would hypothesize that with greater recognition of diversity, equality, and fairness versus say, my peers who went to grad school in the 70's who have all sorts of horror stories/experiences that were ignored then but would today result in faculty censure/crucifixation, that the trend would be downward. A trend would indicate possible strategies assuming a causative correlation could be established.
4. Conversely, if the trend is upward, is it possible that students are increasingly unprepared and unqualified to be in grad school? We see this at the college freshman level where significant numbers of students require at least one remedial course (e.g. are not prepared for college), a trend that appears to be increasing:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/colleges-enroll-students-arent-prepared-higher-education It would be interesting to know if this follows through to the graduate level AND if level or preparedness/ability
correlates to the anxiety/depression. If you're not capable and/or are suffering imposter syndrome, then anxiety and depression would logically follow.
The topic is very much worthwhile and important, but the work referenced here is NOT the way to study it. If I were a reviewer I would have rejected this paper which seems to me to be presenting data not much better than a poll you'd find on Buzzfeed.
Rob "tell me how you really feel" Toreki
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It is the constant stress of trying to get your project to work, hitting one dead end after another, and having to 'compete' for your advisor's attention that I would think is causing a lot of the problems.
Related to this, I have read that one issue that many graduate students, particularly in biosciences, struggle with is that their research has become so specialized that they aren't sure that they are learning any transferable skills that will help in the non-academic job market. I can imagine that a lack of a clear career ladder would have a significant impact on morale.
I do think that there needs to be more acceptance and even promotion of college mental health services;
I agree that this is an important resource. According to people with experience in both sectors, one of the big differences between academic and industrial labs is that managers of industrial labs have significantly more training and focus on managing people and work groups than in academic labs. Mental health services are important support systems when academic research managers are over-stretched by teaching and service responsibilities as well as research oversight.
Interestingly, I have also read that the most depressed faculty members are those who have just received tenure. This is because at that point their teaching and service expectations are increased to help younger faculty who are being supported in their research work by the institutional investments. It's been my experience that academia is quite a complex culture to operate in, which is why it's so interesting on an ongoing basis.
- Ralph
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