Stress and mental wellbeing among PhD students

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The mental health of university students in the United Kingdom is a topic that has drawn increasing attention in recent years. There have been influential thinktank reports, regular articles in the media, targeted Office for Students funding in 2018, and two national policy frameworks (Universities UK’s stepchange framework in 2017 and Student Minds’ University Mental Health Charter in 2019).

From my own experiences in graduate school, it was a very stressful period of my life. Not only do you have so many things that you have to do on the qualifications side for a PhD, but you also have to work with an advisor that may not have your best interests in mind. Some of them use you like a research slave literally. The movie “Real Genius” can give you an idea of what I mean. I got used to working 14 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, just to get the research adviser off of my back about “his” results. They literally own your future.

Many graduate students in my area of science do not make it simply because the workload is too much for their lifestyle. The class that I started with had an eventual graduation rate of approximately 15% for a PhD from start to finish. Most got either a masters degree (if they survived long enough) or left with nothing at all. There is a time limit of seven years to successfully defend. Miss that deadline by even one day and you get nothing for your hard work.

One of my former research advisors tried to destroy my career many times. He should have never have been hired as a professor because he had zero ethics (and I really mean zero ethics). He was not successful as I earned my PhD in the end on my own merit. I learned how to become stronger and adaptable because of his constant attacks. I got him removed from the university (denied tenure) under evidence of his unethical behavior. Until you go thru that form of hell, one cannot fully understand the effects it has on your life. I still have flashbacks from those events even after more than a decade of time has passed. The worse is when I occasionally relive it in my dreams at night.

I consider, shool years is the best time in our life. I've had so many friends and your life is carefree. You just need to do homework and to learn interesting subjects. It's amazing time for me. At university you become to feel that you are not a child any more and meet some difficulties. But life teaches you to fight with them.

I am a PhD student in Astrophysics in my first year.