The Significant Impact of PhDs on Mental Health: Data Shows Clear Impact

The Significant Impact of PhDs on Mental Health: Data Shows Clear Impact

A study of Swedish doctoral students has shown the enormous influence that doctoral studies have on the mental health can have. The survey provides robust data on discussions about the Mental health crisis in academia. Studies and anecdotal evidence have long shown that Doctoral students are under enormous pressure experience to publish and find funding and jobs in a brutally competitive environment.

The analysis examined the extent to which Swedish doctoral students were prescribed psychiatric medications and hospitalized due to mental health problems. It found that, on average, the longer doctoral students spent studying, the more support they needed. In their fifth year, doctoral students were 40% more likely to require mental health medication compared to the year before graduation (see 'Pressure on doctoral students').

The study suggests that mental health problems "are systemic and have plagued academia for many decades," says Wendy Ingram, founder of Dragonfly Mental Health, a global nonprofit advocacy group in Bradenton, Florida. “Very few studies have examined objective measures of mental health,” adds Ingram.

Using Swedish administrative data from 2006 to 2017, the authors tracked more than 20,000 doctoral students before and after starting their programs. This allowed the team to assess the direct impact of doctoral studies on students' mental health, says Eva Ranehill, a behavioral economist at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and co-author of the study. The preprint 1, which is not yet peer-reviewed, was published on the server SSRN.

Psychoactive medications

Researchers compared the frequency with which graduate students, people with master's degrees, and a sample of the general population accessed mental health services. Before starting doctoral studies, students and those with master's degrees used these services to a similar extent. However, the use of psychiatric medications, such as antidepressants and tranquilizers, increased each year during graduate students' studies. This peaked in the fourth and fifth years — the average length of a doctoral program in most countries — and then fell again in the sixth and seventh years.

The highest risk of being prescribed psychiatric medications during doctoral studies were women and people who had already taken such medications before starting their program.

The authors found a similar pattern when they compared graduate students with a sample of the general population aged 18 to 70. Before starting their programs, graduate students used mental health services at lower rates than the general population, but by the end of their studies the rates were the same.

The study raises the question of whether academic environments are more intensive than other sectors. Surveys 2, 3 suggest that rates of anxiety and depression are higher among graduate students than in the general population, but Ranehill says it's too early to know whether these conditions are more common among graduate students than among people in similarly demanding jobs. “We will examine the different mental health outcomes in different professional fields in future analyzes of the Swedish data set,” she explains.

Pressure increases

The study showed that medication use varied by academic discipline. Science PhDs saw a 100% increase in their fifth year compared to pre-doctoral levels, while humanities and social sciences saw increases of 40% and 50% respectively. Medical students, on the other hand, did not show an increase in prescriptions.

Different norms across disciplines may explain this, says Ranehill: "In some areas you are heavily dependent on your supervisor. In others you are more isolated. Lots of experienced people help a lot, but some do the opposite."

Rituja Bisen, a fifth-year doctoral student in neuroscience at the University of Würzburg in Germany, reports that the pressure to acquire funding and produce publications affects people. “You have to generate data as quickly as possible, and the feeling of competition for funds and jobs can be very strong, even early in the doctorate.”

Bisen, who also struggled with the added — and frequent — stress of moving to another country for her doctoral studies, says she was lucky to receive strong support from her primary supervisor and her department. But some of her friends in other departments were having trouble. "It doesn't matter how good a lab is; if it comes from a toxic work culture, it's not worth pursuing in the long term."

Dragonfly, founded by dedicated academics in 2019, is testing excellent mental health programs in 22 countries for more than 50,000 academics at various career stages. The programs include training using evidence-based approaches to improving mental health, and the group will publish results in 2026.

Bisen says that Finding support networks inside and outside the lab helped her protect her mental health. "I started bouldering with a group of biologists. We talk about stress and let off steam. It's like a support group."

1. Bergvall, S., Fernström, C., Ranehill, E. & Sandberg, A. Preprint at SSRN https://ssrn.com/abstract=4920527 (2024).

2. Evans, T. M., Bira, L., Gastelum, J. B., Weiss, L. T. & Vanderford, N. L. Nature Biotechnol. 36, 282–284 (2018).

   Article
   PubMed
   
   Google Scholar

3. Keloharju, M., Knüpfer S., Müller, D. & Tåg, J. Res. Policy 53, 105078 (2024).

   Article
   
   Google Scholar

Download references