Many people struggle with their mental health during their PhD, even if they have never experienced mental health difficulties before. There is something about the PhD experience that places specific demands on the students that tend to lead to the deterioration of mental health. In this post I will list some of those struggles/demands and relate them to my own experience. I will group the struggles according to what mental health issues they caused for me. 

Anxiety and feeling like a failure

Procrastination and imposter syndrome were the two struggles that most often led to me feeling anxious and like a failure. Many PhD students suffer from the imposter syndrome, and feel like they don’t really belong in academia and will be found out at any moment. This often leads to perpetual feeling of being a failure. The imposter syndrome is also partly systemic to academia, and the way PhD students are treated within the department/university.

Procrastination is a bit of a “chicken or egg” situation. It’s difficult to know whether it comes first or is a result of other feelings. For me procrastination was usually connected to feelings of guilt and anxiety. And because I did not want to deal with those uncomfortable feelings all the time, I procrastinated. But procrastinating made me feel even more guilty, so it turned into a vicious cycle.

Stress/pressure

Financial worries are a common struggle for many PhD students. There is a high proportion of students who are self-funded, and even those that do have funding sometimes struggle to make ends meet. As a result, many students have additional jobs, such as leading seminars in their department or a job external to the university. Struggling financially and having to work alongside your PhD can be very stressful and put a person under additional pressure.

I was self-funded and had to work during my PhD. My first year was the worst as I wasn’t able to get a teaching position in my department. Since I was a qualified teacher I worked as a supply teacher in secondary schools, which was exhausting and too demanding to do with a PhD. For the rest of my PhD I taught in my department, which was easier. However, I always felt like my PhD would have progressed faster if I hadn’t had to work so much.

Depressive symptoms

The PhD is highly unstructured compared to other forms of study or employment. You are mostly left to your own devices and have to manage your own time while there is very little accountability on a daily basis to anyone else but yourself. For me this was the worst, since I worked as a language teacher prior to my PhD and was very much used to structure and feeling useful and like I was contributing to other people’s lives. This also impacted my motivation as I often questioned why I was doing the PhD at all and who would really benefit from my research.

Burn out

Time management is often the cause of burn out among PhD students. You are either working too much or procrastinating and feeling guilty. Additionally, many students feel under a lot of pressure to work to make ends meet, and to also do as much as possible to gain experiences. The PhD is not only about doing your research and writing. It is also going to conferences, networking, doing research assistant work, attending workshops, etc. We are all very well aware of the competitiveness of the market and often feel huge amounts of pressure to gain as much experience as possible. All of this can lead to a burn out, when the body and mind have just had too much.

Low self-esteem

One thing that you don’t get so much in other forms of employment is constant criticism. The PhD is like an apprenticeship where you learn how to be a researcher. And the best way to learn is through someone pointing out everything you are doing wrong. However, many academics/supervisors forget to also point out the stuff you’re doing right. As a result, many PhD students are left with a low-self esteem and feel like a failure. In addition, academia in general can be brutal and academics are used to harsh criticism from the journal peer-review process, and automatically transfer this style onto their PhD supervisees without really thinking about the consequences.