ArticleCBE life sciences education2021
PhDepression: Examining How Graduate Research and Teaching Affect Depression in Life Sciences PhD Students.
Article in CBE life sciences education, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Psychological Outcomes and Research Engagement Among PhD Students in Medicine and Health Sciences: A Systematic Review.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Factors impacting teaching and research anxieties in biology graduate teaching assistants: implications for professional development.Journal of microbiology & biology education · 2025Article
- A qualitative study of graduate student emotional and cognitive processing of unexpected (chance) events.PloS one · 2025Article
- The upside to depression: undergraduates benefit from an instructor revealing depression in a large-enrollment physiology course.Advances in physiology education · 2024Article
- Behind the graduate mental health crisis in science.Nature biotechnology · 2024Article
- Toward Culturally Responsive Mentoring of Muslim Research Mentees in the Sciences.CBE life sciences education · 2024Article
- And the stars look down: science beyond the finite : From prehistorical science to postscience.EMBO reports · 2024Article
- Beyond Gender and Race: The Representation of Concealable Identities Among College Science Instructors at Research Institutions.CBE life sciences education · 2024Article
- The chain mediating role of social support and positive coping between neuroticism and depressive symptoms among graduate students.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Examination of public perceptions of microbes and microbiomes in the United States reveals insights for science communication.PloS one · 2024Article
- Serve Yourself or Serve Your Students? How and When Supervisor Narcissism is Related to Mental Health of Graduate Students.Psychology research and behavior management · 2024Article
- The Aspects of Active-Learning Science Courses That Exacerbate and Alleviate Depression in Undergraduates.CBE life sciences education · 2023Article
- Costs and Benefits of Undergraduates Revealing Depression to Online Science Instructors.CBE life sciences education · 2023Article
- Research Anxiety Predicts Undergraduates' Intentions to Pursue Scientific Research Careers.CBE life sciences education · 2023Article
- Face negotiation in graduate school: the decision to conceal or reveal depression among life sciences Ph.D. students in the United States.International journal of STEM education · 2023Article
- Article
- Students with Disabilities in Life Science Undergraduate Research Experiences: Challenges and Opportunities.CBE life sciences education · 2022Article
- The Experiences of Undergraduates with Depression in Online Science Learning Environments.CBE life sciences education · 2022Article
- Aspects of online college science courses that alleviate and exacerbate undergraduate depression.PloS one · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression compared with the general population. However, few studies have examined how graduate school specifically affects depression. In this qualitative interview study of 50 life sciences PhD students from 28 institutions, we examined how research and teaching affect depression in PhD students and how depression in turn affects students' experiences teaching and researching. Using inductive coding, we identified factors that either positively or negatively affected student depression. Graduate students more commonly mentioned factors related to research that negatively affected their depression and factors related to teaching that positively affected their depression. We identified four overarching aspects of graduate school that influenced student depression: the amount of structure in teaching and research, positive and negative reinforcement, success and failure, and social support and isolation. Graduate students reported that depression had an exclusively negative effect on their research, primarily hindering their motivation and self-confidence, but that it helped them to be more compassionate teachers. This work pinpoints specific aspects of graduate school that PhD programs can target to improve mental health among life sciences graduate students.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.