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.