Month: May 2019

If you are coming to your PhD with a pre-existing mental health condition or you develop mental health issues during it, you may be using psychiatric medication as part of your treatment. Some meds will affect your concentration, energy, etc. more than others.

For me personally, being on sertraline (antidepressant) was no problem as I didn’t experience any side effects, but being on quetiapine (antipsychotic) was a bit challenging. Quetiapine affected my concentration, memory and energy levels and as a result I had to find ways to deal with these side effects. So here are some of the things I found helpful.

Energy levels

One of my main issues was lack of energy from quetiapine. There were days when I was so tired and my brain was in a fog that I wasn’t able to do any work, some days I’d manage a whole day and often only half a day/few hours. This created a lot of problems for me in the beginning because it was difficult for me to accept that I have limitations. So I was constantly frustrated that I couldn’t work like other people and often couldn’t make it into the office (and worked from home). Then I would get depressed about this and procrastinate for days or weeks, which would in turn make me feel very guilty. It was a vicious cycle.

In my final year I realised that if I continue this way I will never finish the PhD, it was torture. So I had to decided to either quit the PhD or find a way to work differently. I did the latter (although quitting is sometimes the right option). I started working when I was able to, not when I should. This meant that I did as much work as I could when I could. Some days this was literally half an hour, sometimes a few hours, and some days I did no wor. I was often feeling more sedated in the morning so I often did work in the afternoon/evening. Finally, if I needed to, I had a “weekend” during the week, and then made up the time working on the weekend (if I was able to). As my supervisor once said – even if you do 10 minutes of work per day it all adds up. And it really does!

So once I stopped forcing myself to work in the “traditional” way and started listening to my mind and body I managed to do enough work to finally submit my PhD 11 months later. Yes it took a bit longer to finish this was but I did finish in the end.

Concentration

Concentration is kind of related to energy levels. The more tired I was the less I could concentrate. Therefore, I did what most people do – had coffee and took frequent breaks.

As relaxation I also played games on my phone which were marketed as improving memory and concentration. One app that had useful games was Peak. I don’t know whether this really helped, or it was a placebo effect but at least I had a bit of fun.

Memory

Issues with my memory were also a struggle for me (especially the longer I was on quetiapine). In particular, I had issues with retaining new information (e.g. I would read a paper and a few hours later wouldn’t be able to remember anything from it, or I had trouble remembering and recalling names of authors). I also developed a slight issues with spelling where I started to spell certain words phonetically (i.e. how they sound) instead of how they were written (something I had never done before).

This was quite frustrating and it was something that I mainly had to accept, but I also found practical ways to help myself. I had a different notebook for different areas of my research and would write notes (also using colours helped me). In addition, I had sheets of paper (or you can use Excel) with summaries of certain research areas (e.g. every relevant author, publication year, key word for topic, number of participants, key words for the method).

As I was approaching my viva, I was worried that my memory might have a negative impact on the outcome, in particular the issue with remembering names and years (I did not want my external examiner to think that I didn’t know the main people or studies in my field). Since I had a great internal examiner who was aware of my mental health issues, I decided to tell her about my memory issues. She was very supportive, and with my permission also told the external, and they allowed me extra time to remember or look up information if I couldn’t remember it.

I came to the UK to do a PhD in 2013. At the age of 28, I gave up a career, family and friends back home in Croatia because I became interested in research. But I had no idea how both wonderful and painful this journey would turn out to be.

I had struggled with my mental health since I was a teenager and had been on medication and in therapy for a number of years (I now have a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder). However, prior to coming to the UK I had been stable and off medication for over two year. Very early on in my PhD I started struggling again with my mental health and went to the GP and the uni counselling service to ask for help, but I wasn’t able to get more specialist and appropriate care. This partly led to me having an episode in December 2015 (I finally got proper help, too bad I had to reach breaking point). At this point I took a six-month leave of absence from my studies.

I was slowly recovering from the episode and getting back into my PhD in 2016 (and was about to get married in two months) when my husband had to undergo chemotherapy for a type of lymphoma which started causing him problems almost overnight. At this point I took another leave of absence to take care of him.

After my husband recovered we both went back to our PhDs and he managed to finish his very soon after. I, on the other hand, had another episode (manic/psychotic) in autumn 2017 which took several months to recover from.

In the meantime, we had settled in York and bought a house and despite all of the problems, life was good. I finally managed to submit my PhD in December 2018 and passed my viva with minor corrections a few months later. I was so happy and thought this was the end.

Then, half way through the corrections I had my third episode (this time a depressive one) and had to ask for a leave of absence and delay the completion of my PhD yet again. I am still coming to terms with this. I know I will finish it eventually but at the moment I can’t help but feel that it’s not fair.

So you can probably guess that my PhD journey was nothing like I could have even imagined, and life threw truly its best crap at me (and my husband) in the last five years. But I’m still glad I came – I met the love of my life, I built a life here and have wonderful family and friends as well as deeper understanding of myself and my abilities (thanks to the PhD).

I managed to finish my PhD (almost!) because I had an understanding supervisor and a supportive husband and friends, but this is not the case for everyone and systemic support from universities is seriously lacking. At present, the PhD degree is structured in such a way that it a) often makes students mentally unwell, and b) does not allow for any deviations from the traditional path (e.g. an ill family member, getting pregnant, being disabled, etc.).  

In the next few posts I will talk about what tips/strategies helped me on my PhD journey but I’ll also aim to discuss some of the systemic problems within universities that contribute to the poor mental health of PhD students world-wide.

I am starting this blog in order to share my experience of doing a PhD with a mental illness and I hope that my experiences and lessons learned may be of use to current and future PhD students (or even finished ones who haven’t had their experiences validated).

Doing a PhD is hard. It is probably one of the most challenging things you will ever do. Even the most mentally stable people frequently experience mental health difficulties during their PhD – so what chance does someone with a preexisting mental illness have? The answer is every chance!

However, doing a PhD with a mental illness requires a lot of patience (especially if you are on medication), learning about yourself and your needs, and listening to your body and mind.

I am hoping to first start with a post about myself and my own experience. I’ll also aim to cover topics such as:

• what makes doing a PhD so challenging
• what are some common struggles
• the relationship with your supervisor
• medication issues
• dealing with procrastination
• dealing with criticism
• and many more…

So stay tuned and let me know if you have a topic in mind you’d like me to cover!