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In general, people don't discuss mental health problems openly, so anecdotes about not seeing mental health problems should be weighted less than those that obs

by dalke 12y ago

In general, people don't discuss mental health problems openly, so anecdotes about not seeing mental health problems should be weighted less than those that observe problems. Still if you had done a search for '"graduate student" "mental health"' instead of complaining about anecdotes you would have found a few things more substantive: According to http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2014_02_04/caredit.a1400031 http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previou... : > According to a report from the University of California (UC), nearly half of graduate students said that a mental or emotional problem had interfered with their academic work in the past year. Yet, little is known about the mental health problems that affect graduate students, including those in science. > In one of the few studies on the subject, ... Nearly 40% of graduate students reported feeling hopeless during the previous year, 78.5% said they had felt overwhelmed, 27.2% said they had felt depressed, and 54.5% said they had felt stress over the past year ranging from “more than average” to “tremendous.” > A 2006 report from UC paints a similar picture. About 60% of graduate students said that they felt overwhelmed, exhausted, hopeless, sad, or depressed nearly all the time. One in 10 said they had contemplated suicide in the previous year. More details about that study are at http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/2009/02/23/grad-school-fosters-depression/ http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/2009/02/23/grad-schoo... : > 67 percent of graduate students said they had felt hopeless at least once in the last year; 54 percent felt so depressed they had a hard time functioning; and nearly 10 percent said they had considered suicide, a 2004 survey found. By comparison, an estimated 9.5 percent of American adults suffer from depressive disorders in a given year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. The American Psychological Association, at http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2012/01/heal.aspx http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2012/01/heal.aspx , says "87 percent of psychology graduate students reported experiencing anxiety, and 68 percent reported symptoms of depression. Even suicidal thoughts — with a prevalence of 19 percent — were relatively common." To follow up on the suicide issue, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9357084 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9357084 says graduate students were at greater risk for suicide than undergraduates.

moyix 12y ago
It's true that people don't discuss mental health problems openly, and so they're less observable. However, the initial comment was about being committed to a psych ward, which is observable, so I think it's fair to offer anecdata in the opposite direction. You are right that I should have done a search for the relevant data before criticizing the use of anecdotes. Perhaps this should be a rule for online discussions involving anecdotal evidence – the poster should also make an effort to see if there's real evidence out there. Thanks for posting data!
- dalke 12y ago
  Medical privacy laws in the US makes it hard to draw those connections. Can you tell who has been admitted to your nearest psych ward? The OP wrote "I bet that at least one of your fellow students will wind up in a psychiatric hospital", not that you would know that to be the case. I doubt that the department head will tell people that student X is no longer in the program because of mental health reasons ... nor pretty much any other reason. A friend of mine killed himself a few years ago and it took months before I could finally learn how he died, as no one would say more than "died too young." (A social worker friend of mine did clue me in that that's code word for a suicide.) Now replace that with "decided to leave the program" and how do you know what happened? There is no need for precise data. The link is to a set of suggestions for people thinking of entering graduate school, made almost universally by people with PhDs. The OP objected to the lack of information about the dark underside of graduate school, and pointed out the likely survivorship bias. I think you are unfairly raising the bar on the OP by calling for more rigor. If you think it's anecdotal fear-mongering then you must also object to the original responses, as their individual experiences are also anecdotal, and perhaps even anecdotal whitewashing. Their advice did not include any real evidence either.
  - moyix 12y ago
    > I think you are unfairly raising the bar on the OP by calling for more rigor. If you think it's anecdotal fear-mongering then you must also object to the original responses, as their individual experiences are also anecdotal, and perhaps even anecdotal whitewashing. Their advice did not include any real evidence either. Oh, I do! I was trying to allude to that by including "fairy tales" in my first comment, but I should have been more clear.

by dalke 12y ago

moyix 12y ago

It's true that people don't discuss mental health problems openly, and so they're less observable. However, the initial comment was about being committed to a psych ward, which is observable, so I think it's fair to offer anecdata in the opposite direction. You are right that I should have done a search for the relevant data before criticizing the use of anecdotes. Perhaps this should be a rule for online discussions involving anecdotal evidence – the poster should also make an effort to see if there's real evidence out there. Thanks for posting data!

dalke 12y ago
Medical privacy laws in the US makes it hard to draw those connections. Can you tell who has been admitted to your nearest psych ward? The OP wrote "I bet that at least one of your fellow students will wind up in a psychiatric hospital", not that you would know that to be the case. I doubt that the department head will tell people that student X is no longer in the program because of mental health reasons ... nor pretty much any other reason. A friend of mine killed himself a few years ago and it took months before I could finally learn how he died, as no one would say more than "died too young." (A social worker friend of mine did clue me in that that's code word for a suicide.) Now replace that with "decided to leave the program" and how do you know what happened? There is no need for precise data. The link is to a set of suggestions for people thinking of entering graduate school, made almost universally by people with PhDs. The OP objected to the lack of information about the dark underside of graduate school, and pointed out the likely survivorship bias. I think you are unfairly raising the bar on the OP by calling for more rigor. If you think it's anecdotal fear-mongering then you must also object to the original responses, as their individual experiences are also anecdotal, and perhaps even anecdotal whitewashing. Their advice did not include any real evidence either.
- moyix 12y ago
  > I think you are unfairly raising the bar on the OP by calling for more rigor. If you think it's anecdotal fear-mongering then you must also object to the original responses, as their individual experiences are also anecdotal, and perhaps even anecdotal whitewashing. Their advice did not include any real evidence either. Oh, I do! I was trying to allude to that by including "fairy tales" in my first comment, but I should have been more clear.