46 ms·
A PhD state of mind (2018)
- sjg007 8y agoFunny it took so long to get this research out.
- sygv 8y agoThe grad student writing it up had to take leave
- lquist 8y agoThis study does not seem very robust. How do we know that folks that enroll into PhD programs are not just more likely to have mental health issues? There is a positive correlation between IQ and mental health issues at least at the higher end of the scale and this could be a manifestation of that.
- lainon 8y ago> There is a positive correlation between IQ and mental health issues at least at the higher end of the scale I have only read scientific studys which confirm that the lower end of the IQ scale correlates with psychiatric disorders. Can you point me to any papers which support your claim? I'm not saying you're wrong, the claim sounds plausible, it's just that I really haven't read much academic that confirm these claims.
- el_cujo 8y agoI know this is anecdotal, but a lot of PhD students I know who have depression struggled with it in undergrad as well, the stresses of pursuing a PhD just made it worse/caused a relapse. To be fair though, the article does acknowledge that the studies done are not enough, saying that "the evidence is too limited to permit robust conclusions about the mental health status and needs of researchers. Nevertheless, the potential mental impact of pursuing a PhD should not be disregarded."
- ddavis 8y agoThis is an editorial, not a study.
- barry-cotter 8y agoWe have excellent reason to believe this is a PhD programme thing because this does not happen in the closest equivalent, professional doctorates like JDs or MDs, not does it occur in MBAs. And the prevalence of mental problems in PhD students is far too high for any other explanation to be credible.
- jacobolus 8y agoThose are completely different types of work, not very similar at all. One is research / research training, involving projects with a large scope unlike anything students have done before, unpredictable timing, a lot of uncertainty and risk, and a certain amount of personal autonomy and social isolation. The others are professional training with many small clear tasks, more or less comparable to previous schooling students already have a lifetime of experience with.
- blastbeat 8y agoThis doesn't surprise me. PhD students remain in a vulnerable position. They are not only intelligent and sensible, but also often exploited by the hierarchy and underpaid. The cynic in me sees the whole procedure of academic ordination as a kind of humiliating ponzi scheme, based on effort justification and the sunk cost fallacy.
- SomethingOrNot 8y ago> They are not only intelligent and sensible, but also often exploited by the hierarchy and underpaid. They are so intelligent that they submit themselves to all of that when they probably have better options...?
- gww 8y agoI think this should be extended to post doctoral fellows as well. People generally focus on PhD students but post-docs are even more vulnerable. Many academic places have some level of protection and oversight for PhD's. These proections are certainly not enough. But post-docs are treated as contract workers, where your supervisor can terminate you whenever they feel like for whatever reason they want. In this situation you really have no recourse and your institution owns your data so you are essentially left with nothing.
- ska 8y agoI think that's a bit of a mixed bag, really, and depends on the organization and how the post-doc is funded. Some are pretty dire, others quite good. That being said, being a post-doc with independent funding (e.g. a national fellowship) is perhaps the best gig in academia, except that it can't last. You can actually spend all the time on research a PI wishes they could, and any leverage people have on you is not financial. Burning bridges could still hurt you of course.
- gww 8y agoThose are definitely amazing opportunities. I have had colleagues who have had those and they were incredible experiences for them. However, I am not sure what the proportion of post-docs are that get that level of independence.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoStudents swiped doorknobs in our chemistry building and analyzed the swabs by mass spec. Antidepressants were found on every one of the doorknobs...and no one was even surprised by that outcome. My boss' estimate about how many grad students are on some sort of psychiatric medication is "all of them."
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoMy conclusion is that the janitor is on antidepressants.
- leemailll 8y agoMore often than not janitors wear gloves doing their work in lab
- heavenlyblue 8y agoThey take so many antidepressants they are too lazy to take their gloves off.
- checkyoursudo 8y agoIn undergrad, one of my jobs was working for the University Plant Services (labor, janitorial, etc). Some of the most well-adjusted people I've ever worked with in my whole life were those janitors and managers. One was even a former high-flying book publisher whose previous life was all stress and chemical abuse. He was an amazing dude. He loved being a janitor at the Uni. Obviously, I can't extrapolate that limited experience to all janitorial staff, but having myself later been through grad school and then professional school and knowing what went on there, I would wager that it wasn't the janitors on anti-depressants.
- throwawaymath 8y agoWhat if one person on antidepressants frequently visits most rooms in the building? I don’t see how we extrapolate from doorknobs to people.
- Glyptodon 8y agoI know people working in a research lab where the PI refers to some of the members as "slaves" in front of everyone. The power differentials are utterly out of whack. It's not remotely surprising what the results are.
- ddavis 8y agoThat's very disappointing to hear. I'm a fifth year PhD student and I tire of hearing things like "this [now automated task] is worth 5 PhD students!" I can't imagine being called a slave.
- gww 8y agoOne of my supervisors used to point out various pieces of lab equipment and equated it's value to X PhD's. It was funny and a bit depressing at the same time. EDIT: I do think the culture of referring to trainees as slaves needs to stop. Even in jest it can be quite disheartening to be reminded how beholden to your supervisor you are.
- foobarian 8y agoI was at lunch once with my advisor and some visitors from a government lab who was sponsoring us. At one point conversation went into hours and productivity (which was particularly constrained at a government facility) and I distinctly remember my advisor bragging about how he could get his students to work nights and weekends to get something done. I sure don't miss it.
- gww 8y agoIt's ridiculous that it's a point of pride for supervisors to overwork their students. Along a similar vein one of my supervisors used to come in on weekends just to see who was there and he would deprecate those he didn't see on Monday.
- Fomite 8y agoIt is. It's something I actively try to combat in my lab.
- louprado 8y agoA bit of a tangent, but does anyone know if a "paper PhD" is still and option ? The first and only time I ever heard of it was during a lecture by Nobel laureate Dr. Shuji Nakamura[1]. IIRC, the University of Florida offered PhD's if you published 5 papers which he did in one year. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUlR9DP6Me4&t=2074s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUlR9DP6Me4&t=2074s
- currymj 8y agosome programs are happy to just have you tack a bunch of papers together into a dissertation. they usually still require you to write the actual document, though, re-explaining the work in each paper.
- wenc 8y agoIt’s called a “sandwich thesis” and it’s quite common in some countries, mostly in Europe. Put together a few papers published in peer reviewed journals, write a introduction, and submit it for defense.
- skwb 8y agoIt's fairly common at my university. You publish 3 papers surrounding a singular theme or topic and you use that for your PhD. You still need to write an intro and have some boilerplate stuff, but it's not uncommon at all.
- Fomite 8y agoThe so-called "Sandwich Thesis" is the default in my field. At this point, doing something else is genuinely strange.
- euske 8y agoAlthough the number is shrinking, it's still a thing in Japan (so-called "ronpaku"). It is generally said that the thesis by a paper PhD must be better than those regular PhDs who completed courseworks, but it's much more efficient. If your thesis is already complete, you can get a degree in less than a year.
- andrewl 8y agoHere are a couple of relevant quotes from Freeman Dyson (who does not have a PhD): “Well, I think it actually is very destructive. I'm now retired, but when I was a professor here [Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton], my real job was to be a psychiatric nurse. There were all these young people who came to the institute, and my job was to be there so they could cry on my shoulder and tell me what a hard time they were having. And it was a very tough situation for these young people. They come here. They have one or two years and they're supposed to do something brilliant. They're under terrible pressure — not from us, but from them. So, actually, I've had three of them who I would say were just casualties who I'm responsible for. One of them killed himself, and two of them ended up in mental institutions. And I should've been able to take care of them, but I didn't. I blame the Ph.D. system for these tragedies. And it really does destroy people. If they weren't under that kind of pressure, they could all have been happy people doing useful stuff. Anyhow, so that's my diatribe. But I really have seen that happen."
- bellerose 8y agoI wouldn't go after a PhD unless being born into a rich family (with a potential fall back). Otherwise its a ticket to an early grave and or lost earning potential. I've encountered a few colleagues who are beyond gifted in what makes them survive the trial. I had a roommate finishing his masters and going for the PhD afterwards. Guy was making bank by prostituting himself to women every few nights. Slept till noon before going to work on his research. I cannot imagine how hard it must be if someone is pursuing the degree without any wealth helping him/her out. I doubt scholarships would be much if any relief. I definitely can see persons ending up in psych wards or taking their life if it becomes too much.
- sideproject 8y agoWe used to call it Permanent Head Damage - it certainly rings true many times during the course.
- duchenne 8y agoAfter reading this, the cynical part of me would say that the start-up world is in competition with the academic world to recruit the best talents. So, it keeps publishing biased articles about the drawbacks of doing a PhD. For similar reasons, it also publishes articles about bad experiences in the corporate world. However, I do remember that, during my PhD, about a third of my lab mates had some kind of mental breakdown. Some suddenly cut the bridge and stopped going to the lab. They would not answer to emails or phone calls. I would say that in the CS fields, successful PhD are most often a very positive experience, and bring a lot of professional opportunities. The program itself is very intellectually satisfying. And now, many of lab mates have very exciting jobs: startup founders, top AI scientists/engineers, professors. However,some students that were used to study very well and have top grades, once they started their PhD program, felt completely lost and hopeless in this totally different way of working and thinking. They had to work (mainly) alone for years. So, if no output came out, they felt very depressed. On top of that, the failure to publish usually extends the length of the PhD program...
- haihaibye 8y ago>> the start-up world is in competition with the academic world to recruit the best talents. So, it keeps publishing biased articles about the drawbacks of doing a PhD. You think Nature has sided with startups over academia?
- duchenne 8y agoAbviously not. Nature sides with academia. This article has been cherry-picked.
- alexgmcm 8y agoStart-ups want CS PhDs mostly. If your PhD is in Chemistry/Biology/Physics, not so much. Some fields of Physics do alright (primarily HEP due to the advanced mathematical/statistical analyses they learn).
- mattkrause 8y ago
- klyrs 8y agoI mean, I spent 10 years working essentially around the clock. I burned out, my mental health crumbled, I isolated from friends, my marriage fell apart. I'd never ever go through that for an employer. It's funny. With complete freedom to choose when and how I worked, I worked myself to the bone. I'm much happier with a job where I'm defensive about my time and wellbeing
- fergie 8y agoI can relate to this. I sometimes wonder if creative, intelligent, conscientious people actually need some kind of mild oppression in their lives in order to be happy?
- vaylian 8y agoComplete freedom means you have to provide the structure yourself. And that is something that is not taught at universities or schools. I know I struggled a lot with this. And even coming to this conclusion in the first place is something that took me several years.
- hyeonwho4 8y agoThis style of editorial is becoming more common, and IMO is almost useless. Saying that "Advisors should take care of their students' well-being." doesn't account for the fact that incentives are for advisors to overpromise to funding agencies and drive their students hard to make up the difference. They control funding/compensation, graduation, and paper piblication/author order, and are set to personally benefit from faster results at higher difficulties. In my advisor's lab, this was done by encouraging competition between students. If a student didn't make experimental progress in a month, a second student was told to work on the same problem. If that didn't work, he would collaborate with postdocs in other labs, sharing ideas and results to get high impact publications quickly. Students needed to publish results as first authors to graduate, so becoming a mere coauthor on someone else's publication after a year of work was a huge setback. One (independemtly wealthy) student was desperate to graduate and published as a first author through another lab with our advisor as a coauthor, and was told that the paper would not be counted. I don't know a single student who graduated without having a breakdown on the way, but the professor in question has become quite famous and received many awards and fellowships in professional organizations for their high-impact work, the department is becoming famous in that field, and the funding agencies have extended funding to pay for five more years with 50% more students. These hand-wringing editorials suggest nothing that will change incentives or hold ruthless PIs accountable.
- noobermin 8y agoUnionizing graduate students is the answer.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mattkrause 8y agoThis came up frequently when I was in grad school. I doubt it is the right solution, especially for PhD students doing experimental work. For disciplines where PhD students are mostly independent and funded via TAships (humanities, sometimes math or social science), a lot of their aggravation is due to university or department policies: how many classes does each person need to teach, how many students per section, how are the classes assigned, how is summer funding allocated, and so on. Collective bargaining could be an effective way to sort this out. In the sciences, however, the model is very different: students are essentially apprenticed to one professor. If there are problems in that relationship, it's not clear to me how a union could successfully intervene since many of the disputes are both a) highly specialized and b) incredibly subjective. My PhD advisor, for example, sat on manuscripts forever. Could a union have forced him to provide timely, constructive comments on them? Probably not. Very few labs set explicit working-hour "quotas", which a union could regulate. Instead, there are productivity expectations: "this should just take an afternoon" and it's unclear how a union could ensure those are reasonable, especially for research stuff which, by definition, has never been done before! Finally, a lot of academia runs on reputation: recommendation letters are essential to get jobs, grants, and promotions. Even if there was an effective grievance procedure, it could get you through to a PhD--and then promptly doom your career. The biggest change I would like see is a transition from students "belonging" to one PI towards a model where all of the faculty are invested in all of the students' success. Management training would be good too. As a grad student and postdoc, you're judged on your ability to train the rats, run the reactions, or image the stars. This is how we pick faculty, and it's a surprisingly small chunk of the actual job, which is mostly people/grant management, with a lot of writing thrown in.
- bluishgreen 8y agoNo shit.
- sandwall 8y ago“Being a graduate student is like becoming all of the Seven Dwarves. In the beginning you’re Dopey and Bashful. In the middle, you are usually sick (Sneezy), tired (Sleepy), and irritable (Grumpy). But at the end, they call you Doc, and then you’re Happy.” Maybe I'm suffering from effort justification. However, I believe I learned a great deal about the art and practice of study.
- known 8y agoTo PhDs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_more_than_one_way_to_do_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_more_than_one_way_to...
- gattilorenz 8y agoWell, it seems that everyone describes the PhD as a tragic experience... for me it wasn't. I don't know exactly why that was, probably a mixture of how it is organized/work culture (Italy is clearly not the US), the extremely caring and human supervisor, and a not particularly competitive field. I would argue that also my fellow PhD candidates were not as stressed as I read here (antidepressants on every doorknob? No way.) Now that I'm done and I moved to another university in the northern part of the EU, I'm still not convinced, by looking at candidates here, that the PhD is such a tragic experience,but maybe I just know lucky people. Did anyone here have a positive PhD?
- r_c_a_d 8y agoYes, I did. My supervisor was quite old-school idealistic in that he believed that good work would rise to the top without playing political games. We were both a bit naive in that respect I think... and we've both had modest careers as a result. But I really enjoyed my PhD and greatly respected his integrity. Other people in our department rose quickly and now have international reputations. But I couldn't treat people like they did and look myself in the mirror every day. One other thing that greatly helped me in my PhD was the mutual support of fellow candidates. On my own I would probably have had a breakdown in my final year as the intensity of writing up alone must be intolerable. That is why I was shocked to read the comment above where a supervisor pitted candidates against each other: that is criminal in my view.
- gattilorenz 8y ago> On my own I would probably have had a breakdown in my final year as the intensity of writing up alone must be intolerable. I think I agree on this one. Writing your thesis is indeed a stressful thing, but there was always a supportive atmosphere from the other PhDs in my department. Maybe because everyone is in the same boat :)
- nestorD 8y agoCurrently in the second year of a happy PhD in France. Looking at other PhD-students around me I would say that those that have few results so far are indeed stressed, but clearly not to those levels, and that the main criteria for their well-being is the quality of their relation with their advisor (if you intend to do a PhD, pick your advisor carefully, you will work with him for the next three+ years of your life). A factor might be that our PhD tend to be shorter (three years) and that students are paid and have no debts (at least for a PhD in science in France, those don't hold for other fields such as literature).
- savgeborn 8y agoI wonder if those PhDs are ready to suffer so much, why don't they work at SV companies where they can get free sushi + 6 figure salary and lots of interesting problems to solve. Why these people are so hung up on getting PhD title. Or any not become a YouTuber? We can easily see that ElectroBoom on YouTube is more respected in the world than any other person holding PhD in Electrical Engineering.
- nvarsj 8y agoIt's not particularly hard to understand. Some people love to work on deep, challenging problems that can take years to solve. This kind of problem solving doesn't really exist in the tech industry. The vast majority of industry work is grunt work - the cutting edge would be implementing papers that poor graduate students publish. The rare places it does exist (e.g. Google/Microsoft research) generally require a PhD in the first place, and are very competitive roles.
- gattilorenz 8y agoPlus, in academia (at least in most countries of the EU, where you receive a salary during your PhD... I don't know how it works in other countries) you can focus on stimulating problems with little business value, and you can decide on your own your research topic, which is a kind of freedom I can't imagine in any industry. I'm more than willing to trade a significant amount of my salary for that freedom.
- mattkrause 8y agoThe "title" is by far the least important part. I really only use it for junk mail and annoying airlines. I went to grad school because I loved science and mystery stories as a little kid, and my mind was absolutely blown when I discovered that you could get paid (a little) to solve scientific mysteries. I like the idea of figuring out the world and making it a better place much more than I like nicer clothes or a fancy car. I'm not a YouTuber because I use a multimillion dollar MRI machine, which my credit card wouldn't authorize, my landlord won't let me fill a room with monkeys, and I do my best work when I have colleagues to bounce ideas off of, not just comment boxes. I do grumble about academia a lot, but it mostly comes from wanting to see it live up to its ideals and possibilities. The current structure is bad in so many ways. You, the taxpayer, are paying for many of these students' training. Wouldn't you rather that they thrive? Even if you don't care about them as people, wouldn't you rather see a return on your investment, in the form of discoveries that make your life longer, healthier, and happier, than have them burn out and quit?
- malms 8y agoIt's both a money and commitment problem. Even without the money problem like in europe, ut makes a very unbalanced life to make so much sacrifice during a so long time..
- ololobus 8y agoThis may differ from one student to another or from lab to lab, but the general thesis is definitely true. I decided to quit academia in favor of IT industry exactly due to this high stress problem, even having a number of relative good papers published. I just could not bear it more. PhD student/postdoc life is extremely unstable: 1) you are very limited in finances; 2) you have to perform a number of different research trials and most of them will have no success; 3) you are always limited in time; 4) there is a continuous flow of grant applications, reports, papers preparation, sometimes teacher assistance works. And in the middle of this you have to find your own unique path in science, your niche. In summary, you have to be ready to live in a continuous disaster during relatively long period of life. If it fits you, then you can achieve success after ~10 years of hard work. Anyway, it was interesting experience for me :)
- chriskanan 8y agoA lot depends on advisor-student compatibility. Different students need different mentorship styles, and some students require a lot more hands on help than others. Research is incredibly hard, especially when just starting. Much of my stress during my PhD was self imposed. I felt like I needed to keep up with the peers I respected, and I knew the metrics required to get the jobs I wanted were hard to reach. It's very easy to get stuck in your own mental bubble. That said, as a professor, I became much more sympathetic to my own advisor. It's easy to criticize when you haven't actually done the job. Now that I'm a PI, I feel a massive responsibility to my lab members. Being a professor is far harder than any job I had in industry. I spent most of my time helping students do research and fund raising to pay them a pittance (6% success rates for my NSF programs). I also had innumerable other tasks. Seeing my PhD students do well and become leaders in the field has been immensely rewarding, though. Keeping the lab going requires that we all do good work (publishing great papers in top places) or my students won't get good jobs and I won't be able to get money to pay them or educate the next group.
- DrJosiah 8y agoBurned out, hit my limit, and needed to take a break in grad school twice. Once due to contract work (had to pay my bills, so spent a week writing testing code instead of core product), and once due to emotional exhaustion after writing an unaccepted paper (spent a week watching all 7 seasons of ST: Voyager while my ex was at work). Since then (11-12 years now), the work ethic that pushed me through a PhD in 5.5 years left me burnt out after 60-80 hour work weeks at my first gig. Since stopping working for other folks after coming home (except as necessary for pager duty in some cases), I put my spare hours into relationships, family, and personal recreation. With the wife and kids, basically now just family and personal recreation. Unfortunately, my personal recreation tends to look a lot like work (email support, open source projects, ...). Combine that with "working for myself" for the last 21 months, and I've experienced more pain and stress in the process of building a business than I did getting the PhD (solve all the problems, all the time, no academic advisors, no end in sight). I think at this point I've needed to take explicit "I am burned out on this" breaks at least 5 times in the last 21 months. I've been trying to explicitly "not work" in the evenings to cut my own work-driven exhaustion. Trying to do something fun (work on non-work fun software, handle correspondence, play video games, etc.), but at least half my evenings end with starting an overnight "run forever, log failures" set of unittests, or at least updating my daily worklog.
- yargaoo 8y agoVast majority PhDs end up being giant losers. Very few career choices with any money. Being a professor at age 50 isn't a success, really.