[HN Gopher] "How's your PhD going?" A study on mental health
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"How's your PhD going?" A study on mental health
Author : luplex
Score : 69 points
Date : 2023-07-04 20:20 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.plos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.plos.org)
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| Imagine that students used to be very active in various grassroot
| political movements, and these days they cannot organize
| themselves to do some huge protest, stall every university
| lesson, not grade papers and finally get some huge reforms that
| would help them and the rest of the faculty. Unfortunate, this
| probably happens because people who do PhD are not actually very
| assertive on their own and they have very impaired cooperation
| skills.
| shikshake wrote:
| > people who do PhD are not actually very assertive on their
| own and they have very impaired cooperation skills
|
| Where exactly are you pulling this from? That has not been my
| experience, both from my research lab and from other students
| I've met at a variety of conferences.
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| Why they don't organize, do a mass protest and get better
| treatment from the system?
| beoberha wrote:
| I only have a Bachelor's but work at a large tech company where a
| good portion of the technical leadership have PhDs. I can't
| imagine deciding to just go for a PhD right out of undergrad. In
| the grand scheme of things, you know nothing after a 4 year
| degree. I could not fathom finding a topic on which you are truly
| passionate and decide to dedicate the next 5-7 years of your life
| studying it.
|
| After 6 years in industry, I have a much more solid foundation
| and idea of what I want to focus on for the rest of my career.
| But at this point, getting a PhD is not remotely a possibility
| for numerous reasons.
|
| It's an interesting conundrum and I see a lot of PhDs who advise
| against getting one. But I will always have a small pang of
| jealousy towards those that have one.
| shoo wrote:
| see also: Jeff Schmidt's book Disciplined Minds
|
| > In this riveting book about the world of professional work,
| Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground
| for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school,
| where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work
| is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to
| subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological
| discipline."
|
| > The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt,
| is the professional's lack of control over the political
| component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out
| to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives.
| Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively
| inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in
| which professionals typically do not make a significant
| difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals,
| organizations and even democracy.
|
| https://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/
| nradov wrote:
| And yet the majority of people with real political power in
| business and government have some sort of advanced degree.
| There's no guarantee that completing professional education
| will allow you to contribute to society and add meaning to your
| life but it surely increases the odds. The rest is up to you.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Sure is a good reason to start a startup!
| whatever1 wrote:
| An even worse question to a PhD student is: "When are you
| finishing your PhD?"
| marcodiego wrote:
| My father died (heart attack) while writing his master thesis,
| 2001. In the closer family we all attribute this to stress during
| the period. He was a professor at a university, maintained a farm
| and often traveled to Sao Paulo for meetings with his advisor and
| classes.
|
| It was a common sight for me to go sleep while he was still
| writing, wake up and see him still writing. He had a coffee, went
| to the farm, come back home, lecture at the university and went
| back to writing again. When he could, he went to Sao Paulo.
|
| I went somewhat the same route. I finished my master degree but I
| gave up doctorate when I started to feel the impact it had in my
| health. Not only mentally but also physically.
|
| My girlfriend is now also somewhat on the same route. Fortunately
| she will finish her doctorate soon and will still be alive, but I
| see many of the symptoms of my father in her.
| nradov wrote:
| I'm sorry that you lost your father. But stress alone doesn't
| cause heart attacks. Most likely there was some other medical
| issue.
|
| https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors/stres...
| Kirr wrote:
| The study is based on a web questionnaire, answered by 589 out of
| 2552 Ph.D. students. The mental health of the remaining 1963
| students who did not take the survey is very likely to be in
| worse shape than of those who did.
|
| In discussion the authors say "Moreover, we want to emphasize the
| likely sample bias in our data. We recruited participants mainly
| via mailing lists and our project therefore probably has
| especially appealed to people who are already interested in
| health or aware of mental health issues. However, given our
| relatively large coverage of almost a quarter of all Ph.D.
| students at the University of Tubingen, even a selective sample
| can give us insights into overall tendencies."
|
| I guess this bias could be significant. I can't imagine that
| someone who is particularly stressed, depressed and sleep-
| deprived will pay attention to a mailing list message that has
| anything to do with mental health, or aks "How's your PhD
| going?". Personally, if I saw such email, I would close it and
| forget it as fast as I possibly could.
|
| Another problem is that people tend to lie to themselves about
| their mental health issues, telling themselves that it's not too
| bad. They would answer the survey more optimistically, as if this
| makes the issues go away. It takes a good capacity of self
| reflection to see the problems clearly, and the loss of such
| capacity often accompanies other mental health problems.
|
| Additionally, it takes a particularly trusing personality to
| discuss your health issues in a web survey. You never know how
| anonymous it all really is and where the collected data may end
| up eventually. I'm not sure how this correlates with mental
| health. The paranoid types will obviously be less trusting, but I
| guess a certain level of care when sharing your personal health
| data should be normal. In any case, this is another inevitable
| source of bias in survey-based data.
|
| These points don't invalidate the study, just suggest that it
| probably underestimates the real prevalence of mental health
| issues.
| peachypeach wrote:
| Honestly it really just seems like the world's PhD programs are
| designed to ritually haze students and sort them into academic
| society based on unsustainable and barely acceptable
| expectations. I do not have a PhD but all my friends who do (save
| one) have expressed that they would rather have done something
| else with the time and resources it took to get theirs. Really
| sad. My cousin is a Psych professor at an Ivy League and he says
| that in his first class of the semester he tells everyone getting
| PhDs they will likely be taking antidepressants by the time they
| finish -and- that probably all of their professors are already
| taking them. Chilling honestly.
| 78124781 wrote:
| "Honestly it really just seems like the world's PhD programs
| are designed to ritually haze students and sort them into
| academic society based on unsustainable and barely acceptable
| expectations." This is accurate. It's very hard to explain to
| people who haven't been through a PhD program the kinds of
| expectations that are placed on students (example: highly
| influential profs telling an incoming cohort that their
| expectations were "all of you should get a top-20 job"). Those
| who do not "make it" are spoken of in hushed tones as if they
| died and even those who go on to great industry jobs are
| considered failures of some degree.
|
| Many of those who "make it" and get those vaunted prestigious
| TT jobs are also desperately depressed in many cases (at least
| up through getting tenure, but even afterward the whole
| experience seems scarring). This seems to select for incredibly
| dedicated and usually quite intelligent, but also very
| obsessive and emotionally fragile people to finally make it
| through into permanent employment in academia. They then often
| have similar expectations for their grad students to do the
| same as they did, even if they claim on social media to be
| "caring" and such.
| 2snakes wrote:
| Yeah, such is the effect of "jigsaw puzzling" hundreds of
| papers to get a feel for a field. One had better be really
| interested to come into dialogue with others' observations,
| and not have it be trite. Philosophically, scientific
| idealism instead of materialism is one possible way forward
| as the sense/relationship of self-other evolves.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Chilling honestly.
|
| There are a couple ways of looking at this, yours is one take.
|
| We can look at it another way. The kind of people with the
| intelligence and persistence to successfully complete a Ph.D.
| are disproportionately neurodivergent, IME. You'll find a lot
| of people on the spectrum at the upper ranks of academia. Such
| people lack in dopamine production, and may end up taking
| medication to deal with that as they are diagnosed during the
| course of their graduate education, which typically provides
| access to healthcare and therapy.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| For any young person contemplating a graduate program who is also
| interested in technology and science (ie HN reader), the only
| reason to do that is if you gain access to tools and materials
| and knowledge that are unavailable anywhere else. This means
| cutting-edge research labs in whatever discipline you're
| interested in, opportunities to travel abroad to other research
| centers, affiliations with National Labs or NASA's JPL, Stanford
| SLAC, etc. Also, they should be paying you enough to cover
| expenses and tuition, paying for it yourself or heaven forbid
| taking out more loans is not how it's supposed to work. Of
| course, you'll have to have put in the work and be at the top of
| your class to have much hope of getting such offers, plus get
| some good recommendations from your undergrad teachers, and have
| done a fair amount of technical work on an independent thesis or
| as a research lab assistant or some such.
|
| Also, you have to vet your prospective PI's lab very carefully to
| make sure they're not a fraudster or a manipulative sociopath.
| Not as uncommon a situation as you might expect. You also might
| just end up working as someone's underpaid lab tech for six years
| and while you get the PhD at the end of it, nobody will ever even
| cite your research and you'll probably regret the experience (in
| industry, you might have been into a six-figure salary and well
| on your way career-wise by that point, while learning more real-
| work skills at the same time).
|
| If you're doing it for vanity reasons or because it's expected
| best option is to bail on the whole thing and go get a job in
| industry, same if you find yourself in some crap lab run by a
| shyster PI. You can easily end up overworked, underpaid and with
| nothing much to show for it in the end.
| tomohelix wrote:
| I think the only reason I was able to get through my PhD was
| because I am used to the work culture and expectations. After
| going into the industry in a relatively healthy and good company,
| I realized just how much stress I had and how bad it was in
| academia.
|
| In a way, the grinder serves as a test of willpower and
| discipline and those who could persevere through it can say they
| have the mental fortitude to handle stress and still achieve
| results despite adverse circumstances. Whenever I am kinda
| stressed out, I recall my time in school and it gives me
| something similar to "I have been through worse, I can make this
| work".
|
| On the other hand, I tell everyone who bothers to ask that no, a
| PhD is not worth it. Get a master and go to work. Or better, get
| a BS and make the company sponsor that master degree. That PhD
| will drain both your life and energy and once you got it, you
| will still need to compete against people of your level. Nothing
| changes except a permanent mental scar.
| twelve40 wrote:
| Several startups back, I worked for a pompous boss, ex-Goldman-
| VP, who told me that people who get masters are worse
| programmers, especially if it's from a better school than their
| bachelor's. You'll be surprised how many nutty biases people
| have out there.
| totoglazer wrote:
| Isn't this a pretty universally held opinion?
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| As strange as it is, I think there's validity to it. Master's
| degrees filter more on having the money to cover tuition than
| test scores, and it's easier to just buy your way into a good
| school than with undergraduate.
|
| I remember taking courses alongside Master's students who
| were anecdotally less impressive than my fellow
| undergraduates. This experience (along with my dwindling
| pocketbook) helped dissuade me from staying the extra year or
| so, rather than immediately starting work.
| bshep wrote:
| So i did a masters in engineering(3yrs), worked for 2 years
| then went into med school (4yrs) and finished residency (3yrs)
| in the same time a friend of mine did a PHD in engineering...
|
| I was shocked when i found out he had just finished the PHD
| when i was graduating residency.
| dfit99 wrote:
| Just curious, what inspired you to pursue medicine. I have
| been a SDE at a FAANG with 7 years of experience, but I am
| curious in maybe pivoting into medicine or at least combining
| the two fields.
|
| I have been feeling extreme boredom and dissatisfaction and
| was hoping pursuing medicine would give me some renewed
| passion.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| I've dealt with extreme boredom and dissatisfaction and
| changed professions (albeit from software to information
| security) and after years I am again facing the same
| issues. I feel like there may be deeper problems here. In
| retrospect, while a career change hasn't damaged my career
| prospects, (on the contrary, it seems like I am probably
| more employable) I certainly don't have as much experience
| in either field as I would have if I had just stuck to one
| (although, through diligence, I have kept on top of my
| software skills, at least in my particular set of niches).
| As such, I can't necessarily recommend pursuing this type
| of solution to your particular problem (although medicine
| definitely seems distinctly different to tech so maybe it
| WILL solve the problem).
|
| I guess what I'm trying to say is, maybe consider other
| options such as trying to completely understand the root
| cause for your dissatisfaction and extreme boredom. Believe
| me, I know this isn't easy, but at this point I am at a
| loss for other options and feel like I must figure out
| exactly what causes me to feel like this in order to avoid
| having this happen a third time.
| 2snakes wrote:
| You'll need to exhibit character like servant leadership to
| do well as a doctor.
| make3 wrote:
| [flagged]
| AlexSW wrote:
| Presumably that the opportunity cost can be rather high.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _make the company sponsor that master degree_
|
| Just a note that I jumped from academia to industry last
| century, and even then although my advisor and department
| (science) were horrified at the thought of aiming for anything
| less than a doctorate (masters? that's a consolation degree!),
| when I went to talk with the Dean (engineering) he gave me
| exactly the same advice: if you want a degree, get your company
| to pay for it.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| What is your degree in? Because when I got a PhD in EE it was
| covered by either being a Research or Teaching Assistant.
| What school/dept would suggest aiming for anything less than
| a PhD as horrifying? Most students go that path.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Planetary science.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > Nothing changes except a permanent mental scar.
|
| That's a very broad generalization. Everybody has a different
| experience, depending on the field, their advisor, their lab,
| their skills, their personality and so on...
|
| To me, a PhD was pretty much like any other job. The last
| couple of months were bit harder because of the final deadline,
| but nothing drastic when you're young. My current job in
| industry is more stressful overall.
|
| What sucked for me was after the PhD, being an academic, but
| it's another story.
| zwaps wrote:
| I went from finishing my PhD straight into consulting and I am
| happy about the reduced stress and better work hours
| leaveitalone wrote:
| As a solid B student denied access to a PhD, folks that get
| PhDs for business reasons really bug me. Especially if they
| then go on to complain that it was hard.
|
| You don't realise how much some of us want to do research but
| can't get into academia because other, smarter people take the
| spots for prestige or money. Like, go away and just work on
| wall street if you're not interested in doing actual science.
| maxmalkav wrote:
| The main complain in my environment (composed by both doctors
| and dropouts) is not about "it being hard" but "it being
| disappointing", specially when you are interested in doing
| actual science but you find that will be a small part of the
| process and many times not as rewarding as expected. You add
| department politics, personal differences with supervisors or
| the whole publishing business to the mix and it can get
| really ugly really fast.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| I'm sorry that you were denied access, gatekeeping is real,
| especially in STEM fields.
|
| I just want to offer that not everyone doing a PhD is doing
| so for reasons of money or prestige, and not all of them are
| coming from money or prestige. And the gatekeeping doesn't
| end once you get in, either. If anything it intensifies the
| further along you get, and by orders of magnitude the more
| your circumstances don't parse to something like {age = <30,
| marital_status = single, kids = false, parental_income =
| upper_class | middle_class, parental_support = true,
| needs_to_work_to_survive = false, parent_has_bachelors =
| true}
| ray__ wrote:
| Not criticizing your take, just curious-grades and GPA have
| never been a primary factor for any of the PhD admissions
| committees that I've been on or exposed to. Usually other
| factors like research experience, letters of rec, and other
| personal experiences easily outweigh grades, especially if
| they're just Bs (very low grades would be an issue). Where
| are your B grades affecting your grad school applications?
| georgeburdell wrote:
| For me, the biggest drawback was doing all of the life things
| later. I graduated at 27, which is on the earlier end, then met
| my partner a year later, got married 2 years after that, bought
| a house 2 years after that, and then 2 years after that finally
| felt settled enough to have our first child (second was born 3
| years later). Money was usually gating each step.
|
| We're going to be pushing 70 before our children have children,
| if they take the same path.
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| Do you have a mortgage on the house or is it actually yours?
| lumiukko wrote:
| Are you aware of how privileged you are?
| tomrod wrote:
| When discussing with someone, proper manners enlightens a
| discussant to avoid painting them into a proverbial corner,
| since such is a negative interaction.
|
| From what I read, the person worked their tush off to get
| through a graduate program, then pushed for more money in a
| career.
|
| What aspect of this do you find privileging? Working their
| tush off? Pushing for opportunities?
|
| A small set of comments online tells one nothing about the
| background of a person, unless one actively looks for dog
| whistles and shibboleths.
| calf wrote:
| Not only privileged (in terms of outcome and socioeconomic
| status of a post-PhD career and family), but also rather
| ideological. The person you asked the question to casually
| equates "life things" with family, house, career. It's
| surprisingly a conservative worldview, and IMO a PhD should
| expand a person's thinking more deeply than to accept
| ideology that way. To me this says a modern PhD education
| is too careerist and subverts the purpose of it, and some
| professors have pointed this out as well.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| Do you have anything specific to add to the conversation?
| Immediately starting off taking away things is a not so
| good start.
| akomtu wrote:
| Unless the law grants him special permissions that others
| dont have, he is not privileged.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| First kid at ~33 doesn't strike me as particularly unusual
| for reasonably well off professionals where I live, but maybe
| I'm biased by how my parents went through life and you yours.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| One way to look at it is that with increasing life
| expectanties, 70 will be the new 60 (or even 50). The
| probability that you'll see your kids have kids is going to
| get higher and higher. Also, it may be better that you had
| kids later because they'll grow up in a more financially
| comfortable situation with more aged and experienced parents.
|
| Think of age as a fine wine, not milk :)
| Brybry wrote:
| In the US, life expectancy isn't really increasing.
|
| It's been fairly flat for the last 10 years or so. [1][2]
|
| [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?loc
| ation...
|
| [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/
| f0/Li...
| whatever1 wrote:
| Unless we do something to reverse dna damage I don't
| think that median quality life expectancy can be
| extended.
|
| The variance in quality of life after your 60s is crazy
| high. There are many super healthy 60yo, there are also
| 60yo who are completely devastated from health problems.
|
| And sure maybe you can drag it on for another 5-10 years
| if you have let's say Alzheimer's, but what is the point
| ?
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| If something drastically changes with climate change then
| maybe you are right, if not then life expectancy will fall.
| [deleted]
| mshockwave wrote:
| getting phd at 27 is suuuper early. Granted, friends might
| start to work at 23 or 25-ish but we're talking about a
| doctoral degree, which makes a visible difference on job
| hunting in the field of computer science I'm in.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I don't know if jobs 'in the field of computer science' are
| the same as jobs as a programmer but I think there exist
| plenty of very good programming jobs for which a phd
| doesn't particularly matter, at least where I live. The
| people I know who got phds finished around 26/27 so I think
| it depends on the country/system.
| shikshake wrote:
| The responses on this thread from january did a good job of
| displaying the variety of phd experiences HN users have had:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34449626
|
| From these and my own experiences, the results of this study are
| not surprising but I'm happy to see some published work on it.
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