
Time to talk about why so many postgrads have poor mental health - amelius
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04023-5
======
alpineidyll3
The whys are obvious. What is not obvious is why we allow bodies like the NSF
to continue advocating nonspecifically for careers in STEM when there is no
domestic market for most PHDs. It's also befuddling why most faculty are able
to sleep at night knowing they are at the top of a pyramid scheme.

It's worse than that they encourage young people to pursue a brutal career.
They require what little money is allotted to research to be partially spent
on making this problem worse.

But most readers of nature wouldn't like to hear those things.

~~~
pdfernhout
Here is an explanation from 1994 by Dr. David Goodstein of Caltech, who
testified to Congress on this back then, whose "The Big Crunch" essay
concludes:
[https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html](https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html)
"Let me finish by summarizing what I've been trying to tell you. We stand at
an historic juncture in the history of science. The long era of exponential
expansion ended decades ago, but we have not yet reconciled ourselves to that
fact. The present social structure of science, by which I mean institutions,
education, funding, publications and so on all evolved during the period of
exponential expansion, before The Big Crunch. They are not suited to the
unknown future we face. Today's scientific leaders, in the universities,
government, industry and the scientific societies are mostly people who came
of age during the golden era, 1950 - 1970. I am myself part of that
generation. We think those were normal times and expect them to return. But we
are wrong. Nothing like it will ever happen again. It is by no means certain
that science will even survive, much less flourish, in the difficult times we
face. Before it can survive, those of us who have gained so much from the era
of scientific elites and scientific illiterates must learn to face reality,
and admit that those days are gone forever."

And see also "Disciplined Minds" from 2000 about some other consequences:
[http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/](http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/) "In
this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt
demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the
individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows
that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are
hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological
discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt,
is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or
her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to
society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional
education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically
subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant
difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations
and even democracy. Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an
independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate
society."

Or Philip Greenspun from 2006: [http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-
science](http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science) "This is how
things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He
got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment
worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of
California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite
interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying
him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family
to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his
forehead. Why then, does anyone think that science is a sufficiently good
career that people should debate who is privileged enough to work at it?
Sample bias."

Or the Village Voice from 2004 about how it is even worse in the humanities
than sci/tech grad school:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130115173649/http://www.villag...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130115173649/http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-04-20/news/wanted-
really-smart-suckers/1/) "Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see
in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than
$20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian
environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners,
as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting
specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read.
Then it's time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable locations,
with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at all. You may
end up living 100 miles from your spouse and commuting to three different work
locations a week. You may end up $50,000 in debt, with no health insurance,
feeding your kids with food stamps. If you are the luckiest out of every five
entrants, you may win the profession's ultimate prize: A comfortable middle-
class job, for the rest of your life, with summers off. Welcome to the world
of the humanities Ph.D. student, 2004, where promises mean little and revolt
is in the air."

The odd of success are probably even lower now with expanding use of adjuncts
to replace tenured faculty.

Of course, the irony is that US society now has more than enough wealth so
that anyone who wanted to could live like a graduate student researching
whatever they wanted on a basic income.

~~~
btrettel
> Of course, the irony is that US society now has more than enough wealth so
> that anyone who wanted to could live like a graduate student researching
> whatever they wanted on a basic income.

Which is more or less my plan. Some details here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16610362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16610362)

> My plan right now is to save money, retire early, and then do whatever
> research I want that fits my budget. This avoids many of the problems with
> the current system, but is not possible for many.

> This would allow me to pursue more risky research (in the sense that the
> research may fail to produce useful results) than an assistant professor
> trying to get tenure could. I also wouldn't have to raise funds, so I could
> focus on projects I believe are important, not just what can get funded.

I wish this option was more known and accepted. Some people seem to think I'm
insane to intentionally pursue this, but as far as I can tell they don't see
that the ship they are on (academia/government research/etc.) is sinking. It
would be nice to talk with other independent researchers of this variety,
exchange best practices, etc.

~~~
overeater
I wish you the best, but there's no one to talk to because no one has
succeeded doing it. No science is done by independent researchers. You'd be
limited to a very tiny sliver of research that doesn't require staff or
expensive equipment. You'd be doing research without the support network of
peers in a department, or colleagues at a conference to talk to. We should not
advertise this as an option since it might make the gullible think this is
feasible to do.

~~~
btrettel
> I wish you the best, but there's no one to talk to because no one has
> succeeded doing it.

There are many examples. Charles Darwin is the most famous. In my field (fluid
dynamics) Robert Kraichnan is also well known and influential.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist)

Of course, plenty of cranks go this route too. It's an option, not a panacea.

> You'd be limited to a very tiny sliver of research that doesn't require
> staff or expensive equipment.

Not a problem for me as a theorist. And I believe that expensive equipment is
overused in my field anyway.

I also disagree that this is a "tiny sliver" of the research. Computation and
theory is roughly half the research in my field, and I suspect this is true
for many fields.

If this option doesn't work for you, don't do it.

> You'd be doing research without the support network of peers in a
> department, or colleagues at a conference to talk to.

I disagree. Collaboration does not require "official" status, and neither does
attending a conference. In my field, no one cares what your affiliation is. At
worst I could start a consulting company, which I'd probably do anyway. Plenty
of consultants attend conferences in my field and collaborate with researchers
in government, industry, and academia.

~~~
overeater
> If this option doesn't work for you, don't do it.

No need to get overly defensive. I'm responding to your argument that this
should be more widely known and accepted. Science gets harder to do every year
as the the lowest hanging fruit keeps getting plucked. Your examples aren't
convincing -- Charles Darwin was born in 1809 and things were different back
then. Your other example according to Wikipedia is someone who got a PhD at
MIT, and applied for grants and held faculty positions at a number of
universities.

But hey, if you end up doing this successfully. Come back and tell us how it
went. But in the meantime, I'm going to continue disagreeing with you, that
this is a reasonable route to productively conduct research.

~~~
btrettel
Low hanging fruit is one great example of where independent research can
shine. The incentives are different, so what is considered "low hanging fruit"
is also different. An independent researcher can focus on projects where the
timescale is longer or the project is unlikely to be funded. With independent
research being rare, I can see a lot of low hanging fruit for independent
researchers which traditional academics would not touch.

I could provide an example of research which is disincentivized in traditional
academia but incentivized in independent research from my own PhD research if
you're interested.

> Your other example according to Wikipedia is someone who got a PhD at MIT,
> and applied for grants and held faculty positions at a number of
> universities.

Kraichnan was an independent researcher from 1962 to 2003, the majority of his
career. Yes, he was affiliated with a university at multiple points of his
career, but he spent 4 decades as an independent researcher and produced some
of his most important work during that time.

~~~
aldoushuxley001
> I could provide an example of research which is disincentivized in
> traditional academia but incentivized in independent research from my own
> PhD research if you're interested.

I'd be interested, if possible.

~~~
btrettel
Sorry for the length.

Traditional academics have the "publish or perish" incentive. In practice this
means that they prioritize "quick wins" over "slow wins", e.g., given a choice
between publishing 1 paper after 1 year (quick win) or publishing 5 papers
after 5 years (with no publications before then) (slow win), they'll choose 1
paper after 1 year. If an academic goes too long without a publication, that
will be counted against them. The low hanging fruit for quick wins has been
taken due to this incentive, but I see no shortage of slow wins. (The scenario
I describe is an extreme case, but the same incentive still exists in less
extreme cases.)

There's also the problem that what can get funded is not necessarily what's
most important. Norbert Wiener discusses this at length in his 1950s book
"Invention". Wiener notes that despite the obvious political differences
between the USSR and US, research funding is allocated similarly: by people
too far removed from the actual research, who are often not in a good position
to evaluate its merit. It doesn't matter if these people are managers,
bureaucrats, or fellow scientists. There's generally an asymmetry in
information between the scientists requesting funding and those able to
provide. (Having more time to learn about each proposal could help, but the
trend I imagine is that time available to review each proposal has decreased
over the years.) This ignores the lottery like nature of the entire funding
process.

To get more specific, both of these problems are would disincentivize a
traditional academic from publishing this paper I recently submitted to a
conference:

[https://engrxiv.org/35u7g](https://engrxiv.org/35u7g)

In principle, a traditional academic could have written this paper. It's
possible, but I think less likely because of "publish or perish" incentives.
(To be clear, I am a PhD student right now, and most of the time I was doing
the research in the paper I was a TA. I don't have the "publish or perish"
incentives that make this research less likely. If I stayed in academia longer
I would.)

My advisor and I tried to get funding for this project, but our grant proposal
(I wrote the vast majority of it) was rejected for reasons beyond our control
(which I have no problem with). We received positive comments on the proposal,
and it served as a draft my PhD proposal.

Without going into detail, the paper develops a simple mathematical model of a
certain physical process. The theory and its validation would not have been
possible unless I did two things that traditional academics seem to think are
a waste of time:

1\. Very comprehensive literature review.

2\. Very comprehensive data compilation.

Now, I think most people would believe these two are just what academics do.
But apparently not. Traditional academics are incentivized to do the bare
minimum to get another publication. There's an epidemic of copying of
citations and merely paraphrasing review sections of papers without reading
the original papers, and I think this is caused partly because of these
incentives.

The literature review I did (not all of which made it into the short
conference paper) was considerably more comprehensive than any I've seen
published in the field before, and I was able to synthesize past theories and
improve upon them by recognizing some of their flaws.

How do I know I was more comprehensive? One way is by the excellent papers I
found which few seem to be aware of. In the paper I mention, papers 3 through
8 have very few citations. Some of them have not been cited at all in the past
40 years to the best of my knowledge. Someone could say that these papers are
just unimportant, but they're not. In my view they're "sleeping beauties":

[https://www.nature.com/news/sleeping-beauty-papers-
slumber-f...](https://www.nature.com/news/sleeping-beauty-papers-slumber-for-
decades-1.17615)

Further, I spent a year or two alone digging deeper and deeper into the
literature in this problem. There were several times when I thought I probably
had at least touched everything, but a few weeks later I found yet another
area that I had missed. Being comprehensive is difficult and time consuming.
If you just want the minimum to publish, you won't bother.

I also benefited from certain heuristics which allowed me to identify
important neglected research. For example, I spent a lot of time tracking down
foreign language papers and books because I recognized that this research was
avoided because it was written in a different language, not because it was
bad. The entry costs to foreign language literature have dropped greatly over
the past decade with options like Google Translate. I've translated around 10
full papers into English right now, and produced many more partial
translations. These papers have provided critical insights that were necessary
towards writing this paper. At this point some people I know use the fact that
I like reading foreign language papers as a joke. Traditional academics think
this is absurd, but I see that there's value, just that it takes time to be
realized.

It was through my comprehensive literature review that I got the idea behind
my data compilation. By taking advantage of the properties of a special case,
I was able to get information that most researchers in this field seem to
believe is extremely difficult and expensive to obtain. I did not come up with
the idea myself. I was translating a 1960s Russian language paper into English
when I realized based on what was written in one paragraph that I could use
the properties of a special case to get some hard to obtain information. The
author was actually leading into this. The next paragraph explicitly said the
author was taking advantage of the properties of a special case. So it wasn't
very original on my part. The 1960s Russian researcher didn't have a lot of
data to use, but there's a lot now 50 years later.

So I started compiling data. I get the impression that few academics would
have compiled even half as much as I did, or have been even half as careful as
I have about it. I was very careful to select only the least ambiguous data
sources. Out of over 100 candidate data sources, there were only around 20
which were acceptable. I then took the time to carefully transcribe all of the
relevant data from these sources, and develop a computational framework to
handle this data (based on Python and Pandas). It was probably at least 6
months of work, but I can produce several papers based on it, so it's
worthwhile in my view. My advisor was not initially enthusiastic about
compiling this data, by the way. He's a successful traditional academic,
however, and his intuitions are calibrated differently than mine are.

------
wpietri
Not shocking at all. One of the stunning things to me about my grad school
friends' experiences is how many had stories of dealing with deranged, abusive
faculty. Shit that would have me changing jobs in a heartbeat, but they
couldn't really change PhD programs, and their departments would never do a
thing beyond a pained look and a shrug of shoulders.

As an aside, if you want to be able to spot abusive behavior better, I
strongly recommend this book:

[https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-
Controlling/dp/04251...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-
Controlling/dp/0425191656)

It's the single most astute book I've ever read. The author spent years as a
counselor for abusers, mostly there because a court ordered them there. It's
clear that after listing to years of abuser bullshit he said, "I'm going to
write it _down_." It's nominally target at women in abusive relationships with
men, as that's what he dealt with most. But a lot of the lessons transcend the
context. It helped me spot an abusive boss, for example. And the details on
abuser motivations and how abuse cycles benefit the abuser have been very
helpful to me in a work context as well.

~~~
untilHellbanned
Agreed. I think academia is up for its #metoo moment. Not sexual abuse, but
emotional abuse. Many professors particularly the most prestigious ones (man
or woman) are collosal a-holes.

Though most would say I’m flourishing in the ivory tower now as a professor at
a top tier med school, my training experiences have been terrible. For
example, I’d be rich if I had a dollar for every time I heard my former boss
say “I don’t care about this {thing that you spent 5+ years on that I didn’t
really allow you to work on anything else}”.

~~~
nabla9
I think there is a common economic structure in organization that creates
a-hole cultures.

Actors, PhD students, etc. enter into superstar economy where many people
compete for very small number of positions with prestige, money, power, fame
(or whatever the measure of success is in the field).

Each position with value has large number of potential candidates who are all
good enough. It's difficult or impossible to rank the top applicants with high
accuracy and objectivity. Those who are selected are receiving something of
great value from their mentors for subjective or arbitrary reasons.

Normally you would use auction or some other mechanism to sell the position,
but actors or PhD student's don't have that kind of money and selling a
position may be seen as ethically questionable because you are supposed to
select the best.

The abusive culture is the result of this extra value that is given out for
subjective reasons. Movie actors can be expected sell sex to cover the gap
between their innate value and the position they are getting, PhD students can
be used as a slave labor for years.

To correct the situation incentives should be aligned. If PhD student works on
something for 5+ years, it should cost something for the boss. Dropping out
from PhD program should cost something for those who are in the position to
select who gets in.

~~~
speedplane
Interesting that you focus only on actors and PhD students. What you describe
is true of just about any field. The superstars are, by definition, rare.
Sometimes they get their due to incredible skills, sometimes by luck, most
often by both. It's also often the case that superstars not necessarily the
best.

This is true for superstar programmers, lawyers, basketball players, managers,
machinists, and just about everyone.

It's difficult to rank anyone for almost anything, the best aren't always
chosen, and people often win for talents unrelated to their core competency.

To sum it up... life isn't fair.

~~~
nabla9
You are either overgeneralizing or focusing in the wrong aspects of
superstars.

Functioning job market is antidote for subjectivity. Basketball players and
many other sports have selection process and auctions and player markets.
Multiple teams can evaluate the candidates and there is binding contracts
where money is exchanged.

(sports is US collages may be a form of abusing cheap labor though)

~~~
speedplane
Every selection process or auction contains subjectivity. Ball players are not
just judged on their stats, but on their pedigree, coaches, and endorsements,
the compilation of which are subjective. Fine art, which is often sold at open
auctions, is completely subjective. Brands, connections, styles, and attitude
are all attributes that are bought and sold, and are almost entirely
subjective.

Attempting to remove subjectivity from the job application or valuation
process is a worthy goal, but has not historically been terribly successful.

~~~
nabla9
The mechanism I described does not arise from the subjectivity alone.

------
lsd5you
So many problems, and probably too much good press for the post-graduate
qualifications and the system as a whole.

My somewhat anecdotal recollection (from a good university) was that most PhD
students stayed on by default as a way to continue in education with the
campus lifestyle - except inevitably in a diminished way. If it wasn't this
then it was to fulfill some naive ambition about making their academic prowess
have some direct impact on the world.

So I think most of these problems are almost inevitable. A student goes from
undergrad, where they are learning to close to the limit of human
understanding in their subject at a break kneck pace, to perhaps (e.g. a
physicist) spending 3 years studying what shape of foil best reflects
microwaves in some particular manner.

Socially most of their peers have moved on.

Progress in science has been increasingly pushed beyond the reach of often
otherwise brilliant individuals.

They have a project of often dubious value which is a completely different
challenge, and a completely different value proposition to what they were
doing in undergrad.

These problems are probably not well communicated, because everyone has a
vested interest in continuing the lie. The PhDs generally don't want to admit
failure and a poor life choice, the 'system' doesn't want to lose
prestige/funding and the public want to maintain an unrealistic image about
the practice and progress in the sciences. Most of the actors involved have
essentially good intentions, yet it's leading to wasted talent and severe
mental health problems.

~~~
rocqua
Are you perhaps European? I recognize your sentiment of people doing a PhD to
continue being a student, but it seems the majority of HN doesn't. This
suggests, this kind of thing doesn't happen in the US.

From what I know, a PhD in the US is rather different from one in the EU.
Though things also differ between EU countries.

~~~
lsd5you
Yeah, UK (Or should that be not sure).

Seems to be the same result by a different mechanism? I'm not entirely sure
what the alternative view is of how this situation has come about. Why are
students willingly entering into this deal. Is it being missold? Shouldn't
there be a lack of demand.

~~~
rocqua
From what I know, British PhDs are positions that pay a wage. Whereas in the
US, you need to find your own funding.

Thus, in the US there is more pressure on a PhD, because they need to take
care of their pay.

~~~
tnecniv
In the US, your funding primarily comes from your PI. You may have to
supplement it via TAing some semesters depending on your group's resources.
Even if you are lucky enough to get something like an NSF GRFP, that wont fund
your full five or more years as a student.

~~~
rocqua
Duration is another difference, 5 year PhDs are rare in Europe. The
Netherlands mostly has 4 year programs, Germany mostly seems to have 3 years.
At the same time, PhDs here require a MSc (2 years usually), which in turn
requires a BSc (3 years usually). So in the end, total time from start to PhD
doesn't differ too much.

------
eecsninja
Many good comments here pointing out the reasons for this. One overarching
problem I see is that academia (just like many/most institutions) is a bubble.
People who are immersed in it are only able to see the way things work from
the limited perspective of that academic bubble. There are few senior members
of the bubble (in this case professors) who can really teach you to think in
terms of the bigger picture of life and society as a whole. And even if they
exist, there isn't a class for that.

When a starry-eyed high school graduate with little knowledge of how the world
works, but with a strong interest in and ability to do science, goes to a top
research university, he gets a lot of that academic bubble viewpoint. He's not
taught to think independently or to identify and question the fundamental
assumptions of that bubble. So he just takes it all in and does "the right
thing" to go on to get a PhD, without necessarily thinking about all the
implications for how it determines the rest of his life.

Doubly so if he comes from a cultural background that puts academic
achievement and degrees on a pedestal. A lot of Asian cultures, for instance.

I don't know if there's a top-down solution for this. Any institution will be
blind to the fact that it isn't able to look at the big picture of reality
with minimal bias. It is really up to those of us who are aware of these
issues to talk about this on the internet, and hope that as more people use
the internet, curious individuals can learn enough to make a good decision.

BTW, the above description is based on myself. I am Asian American, had a
sheltered suburban upbringing, really excelled at math and science, got almost
full scores on college entrance exams, went to college at a top research
university, etc. This university was really geared toward pushing people into
scientific research. Fortunately I wasn't good at research but was great at
building things, and realized early enough that I should go into industry.
I've learned so much more about the world since then through my experiences
outside of academia.

~~~
crx087
Not to detract from all the valid points raised in this thread, but the
elephant in the room is that an individual’s level of education is generally
associated with increased intelligence, and higher intelligence is associated
with much higher rates of almost all psych diagnoses.

The same is also true in most other areas of higher personal achievement:
lawyers, CEOs, politicians, etc are all disproportionately on various
spectrums of depression, substance abuse, sociopathy, narcissism, and so
forth.

At least part of the problem is how we view mental conditions as a society,
which leads people to think that this is abnormal.

~~~
verylittlemeat
Couldn't it be that a high level of education/intelligence is also a sign of
high socioeconomic status which would imply better access to healthcare and
more psych diagnoses?

This might be wrong but it seems like an obvious superficial criticism.

~~~
cJ0th
This would mean that you wouldn't find a difference in poor and highly
educated Canadians. I don't have data on this but I doubt it.

~~~
verylittlemeat
You might be right but it looks like this specific article is USA specific (at
least the paper it's referencing is).

------
tomrod
I'm one of these postgrads who decided that if I were going to face the same
politics in academia as I would in industry, I should be better paid.

Surprisingly, the politics are much less where I landed. Hard work, though.

The biggest issue I've both experienced and seen about 90%-95% of PhDs in
industry I mentor is that crushing feeling of inadequacy at being the "expert"
in the room. Imposter syndrome is real.

My primary bit of advice is to seek mentors that invest in you. This is true
whether you are experiencing Imposter Syndrome or not.

~~~
wakkaflokka
I'm many years out from my PhD, but still get impostor syndrome even working
in the corporate world. Like a constant nagging feeling that I have no idea
what I'm doing, and other people definitely know what they're doing. As long
as I'm able to portray on the outside that I know what I'm doing, I'm able to
achieve most of the objective measures of "success", but I still have the
impending fear that at some point, I'm going to be found out...

~~~
tomrod
You'll probably be found out as successful.

For me, just talking about it with trusted peers helps. Inside your company,
if you completely trust some coworkers, or outside the company, if you don't.

------
pishpash
Why? Let's start with:

1\. More students than advisors, so a built-in pyramid scheme unless academia
expands exponentially forever.

2\. Fully backloaded reward system, so a built-in lock-in until the end, and
the evaluation/reward isn't under your control.

3\. For some, spend years doing work but only a small piece is relevant to the
reward.

4\. For some, zero actual training for the eventual academic job, if they get
it.

5\. It's a job where you do all the work and take all the risk, but are paid
like shit and treated like a favor is done to "train you".

In other words, the whole thing is set up to destroy the self worth of a
normal person and take away their agency and independent identity. Without
coping strategies, I would expect them to develop mental issues.

~~~
haidut
How is this different from the GENERAL employment reality in every late-stage
capitalist society? What you just said is applicable to pretty much any
job/occupation in any industry, unless a person is at the top of the food
chain (CEO, tenured faculty, etc).

~~~
pishpash
The difference is, postgraduates in academia _are_ near the top of the food
chain and provide significant value to the economy, as seen by their market
rates outside academia. They are usually the cream of the crop every step of
the way, and on paper they are each independently training to be at the top of
the food chain once they finish. This results in a severe cognitive dissonance
and isolation that don't happen in your "other job/occupation in any
industry". The same is seen with medical residents, where depression is
frequent. Your regular wage-slave may also feel terrible but they have already
accepted their fate.

------
OliverJones
This isn't new. It's a system to furnish high-quality and cheap laborers. Grad
students and postdocs in big-name institutions are like all the hopeful would-
be film actors hanging around LA. There are dozens of jobs and tens of
thousands of applicants. But it's worse in the academy, because there's a
plausible, but false, case to be made that hard work can change the outcome.

For every Nobel Prize, there are ten thousand broken dreams.

------
awergergergrt
My most depressed time wasn't when I was on my PhD program. It was when I was
on h1b and my job was insecure. I was very worried about losing my job because
of project cut and having to leave. In 2015, I was in a state of depression
which was triggered by job insecurity at first, but that was only the first
week. Then following that, I couldn't sleep for about 2 months. I was trapped
in a 3 day loop, the first 2 days, I simply couldn't sleep for a minute. And
the 3rd day I would become too tired and I could sleep for only few hours.

At the time, I didn't know it was depression. I thought it was just Insomnia.

------
chiefalchemist
Mental health issues are everywhere, not just postgrads. Every week it's a new
article about some easy to label sub-segment of the population.

It's time to talk about why so many (Americans) have poor mental health.

It's time to talk about the "hidden" costs (i.e., effects on physical health)
of poor mental health.

It's time to talk about this symptom and what it says about the broader
culture / society.

------
ImaCake
When I was a PhD student I would sometimes get so sad I couldn't work anymore
that day and go home (and eat a family block of chocolate). I thought I just
had emotional issues and needed to work on my mental health.

Turns out the problem was just that I was doing a PhD. I got bad burnout and
left it behind. I only wish I did it sooner!

------
rednerrus
Trying to win your parents love by working yourself to death is a
recipe/indicator of poor mental health.

~~~
projektir
That's an odd way of looking at it. I'd say it's an indicator of poor
upbringing (whether parental or social), and it _results_ in poor mental
health.

------
alexashka
A lot of hard work, very little financial certainty. I don't know if word that
as that mental health, anymore than I'd call someone who doesn't have enough
food, to be having poor physical health. When we can narrow the term down to
something specific, we should.

~~~
Osmium
> A lot of hard work, very little financial certainty.

Yes. It's exhausting. I'm several years past post-grad, have had a succession
of one-year contracts, doing work I love and believe in and I genuinely
believe has a lasting value, but the lack of any kind of security sucks. I'm
rapidly approaching a wall where by I have to either go for tenure
track/something more managerial/teaching or leave for something hopefully more
lucrative in the private sector.

Sadly continuing with my present (rewarding, interesting) work is not an
option _even though_ after I leave, the work will still exist and will still
have to be done by someone. But the academic system, such that it is, is a
conveyor belt, and you gotta move on or get off.

And I got lucky too. My postgrad experience was short, went relatively well,
and I'm well paid by academic standards now. I'm constantly surprised I made
it out ok given the amount of stress it generated. I know many people who had
much more miserable experiences in postgrad.

~~~
crispyporkbites
Not excusing the system, but for 99% of the population rewarding, interesting
work is an oxymoron

~~~
wolfgke
> Not excusing the system, but for 99% of the population rewarding,
> interesting work is an oxymoron

This is one of the reasons why I often ask myself why the suicide rate is so
low in society.

~~~
alexashka
I think a lot of it is context. For example when I lived in Russia, I didn't
know kids could be nice to each other. It was a doggy-dog world where I grew
up. When I came to Canada, it took me 4-5 years to stop mad-dogging people and
relax.

Had I stayed there, being on alert your whole life and dropping dead at 55
would've been very normal indeed.

This is why people who get someplace and then lose it, are the ones who tend
to kill themselves, or folks who have a hard time fitting in from the get-go.
For most people, they don't know things could be different, so they're fine
with what is.

~~~
slavik81
> It was a doggy-dog world

You misheard that phrase or learned it from someone who did. The correct
version would be, "It was a dog-eat-dog world." The idiom makes a lot more
sense in its correct form as it describes an environment of brutal
competition.

I'm glad you find Canada to be a kinder place. I like it here too.

------
tankerslay
I'm not sympathetic to the gripe that there's no "proper career guidance" in
grad school. If you want a ready-made career track, you should not be in a PhD
program.

Yes, academia is competitive, and unforgiving, and harbors a lot of eccentric
and even ugly personalities. But the fact that it is "all about the
discipline" is part of the appeal. And society cannot afford to sustain young
people at such a high level of intellectual freedom with anything more than a
"basic income" at best. Most of the things that make academia difficult are
part and parcel to what makes it special.

The biggest change I would potentially advocate is an email to all first-year
students letting them know that if they just want to take classes for a few
years, get a cushy job, and drive a Lexus, they should be in medical school
instead.

~~~
rxhernandez
If people who got their PhDs in Physics from places like CalTech feel like
they're at a complete loss as to how someone like me who only has a BS in
Physics and Electrical Engineering manages to make 1.5x-4.0x what they make my
first job out of college, then there is something seriously wrong with the
system. I've worked alongside several PhD physicists/engineers to know this
isn't an uncommon theme.

I've also had my mentors strongly discourage me from doing a PhD in Physics,
despite my ability, because of how overly saturated academia is with
physicists and how I will have lost money to the order of half a million or
more while returning to the same exact salary and salary cap after the PhD is
finished.

~~~
speedplane
PhDs were not designed to maximize return on investment. They were designed to
encourage students into research with a trophy of a doctorate and societal
respect.

Anyone who thinks that a PhD is the fastest way to riches needs to have their
head examines (by a PhD).

------
majos
This varies by field, and it varies very closely in proportion to the
employability of a master's degree in that field. A master's degree in biology
does not have the job prospects of a master's degree in computer science, so
biology PIs have far more leverage to keep their poorly-paid grad students
(and postdocs) working for them.

------
motohagiography
What do all the sane people do?

Good mental health includes things like confidence, self-actualization, self-
determination, a true perception of reality, autonomy, and a positive view of
ones self and ones ability to effect change.

Not having a PhD, but experience working and living with them is that there
was a gap between their self-esteem and their actual self-confidence that
caused many of them to suffer.

If good mental health is not something you are directly rewarded for, success
in that field is going to be biased toward people who find a way to sacrifice
it as leverage. From a base rate perspective, this suggests good mental health
in any outlier of success is going to be spotty.

In many cases some fields must create opportunity for people with poor mental
health because the sanity barrier in other fields makes these ones more
viable. When you look at the stereotypes about the professions (lawyers,
doctors, and professors in particular), the ones with low attrition and weak
disciplinary systems acquire that worst reputations, where as a counter
example, many fiduciaries seem even keeled to the point of dullness.

The solutions are likely about teaching good mental health in undergrad or
before, trouble is, the question of what "good," means will likely attract
extreme opposition.

------
cosmic_ape
The study to which the blog links is about a survey, and it finds that among
those who chose to respond to the survey, about 40% have moderate-to-severe
depression, and 40% have moderate-to-severe anxiety, according to a certain
clinically validated scale. Also, among those who reported their work-life
balance as "healthy", the percentages where about 23%, while for those
reporting "unhealthy", 55%.

I take issue with the notion of "work-life balance". Metaphors do matter. This
one, contraposes "work" and "life". They are now mutually exclusive, and
"life" has a well known meaning, and living your life is what you certainly
want to do.

And so, if you take the metaphor for granted, then when you're in the lab, or
next to a blackboard, during your best years, during the most sunny hours of
the day, you are not living your life. It is very easy to feel depressed in
these circumstances. There is this famous Russian fable, about a girl who
invented a monster, and now she is afraid of it.

My point is, a platitude when spelled out like that, that this kind of work is
a _part_ of life, not a mere staircase to some dubious place where you have
"made it". I'd conjecture that a large fraction of these depressions are inner
conflicts resulting from buying into the narrative that there must be some
end-game to this "work", while the only thing that does not require an end-
game is "life", which allegedly consists of cuddling with your loved ones,
raising children, watching TV and climbing the Kilimanjaro.

Nothing wrong with caring about those, they are essential, as well as
financial stability. But if you're in research due to _your_ curiosity, its
part of your life. Its an also an opportunity. And, although society wouldn't
generally perceive it as sexy as Kilimanjaro, its still way better.

The only caveat is that, as with everything in _your_ life, it requires taking
responsibility. If the attitude is "I've been in the system for all these
years, did all they asked me to do, and what have I got for it?", that's a
problem.

------
the_cat_kittles
one factor must be a selection bias towards people who are way too obedient
and receptive to crticism. i think most people decide that its weird to slave
away like that. im speaking generally, of course many people have wonderful
experiences

------
ijafri
We are wise animals but still animals.. I am guessing and it’s a guess since I
don’t have any facts to substantiate this claim that we perhaps were not meant
to be so techy or take so much mental stress. Starting from stressful college
education to financial career, I am still at loss why even humanity moved to
this direction... quality of life is a delusion ... human adjust to their
given environment . In recent times.. all the progress is pacing out leading
to even more stress .. do we really need so much progress so fast ??

------
paraschopra
I wrote about this in my blog [https://invertedpassion.com/librarians-make-
more-money-than-...](https://invertedpassion.com/librarians-make-more-money-
than-scientists/)

It’s simple economics. There’s oversupply if scientists and the world doesn’t
demand/value the research output in most domains (although it does benefit
when something valuable comes out).

------
graycat
Stresses of a Ph.D. program? Yup.

(1) My wife was high school Valedictorian and in college _Summa Cum Laude_ ,
Phi Beta Kappa, and Woodrow Wilson and NSF Fellow.

For her Ph.D., she did fine in her coursework. But starting research, she
struggled terribly: For her, the research itself was easy. Her problem was
that, unlike coursework, what was _good_ , good enough, too good, what was
really wanted, the realities of research, were totally unclear leaving her
terrified of doing something wrong.

The stuff of professors being not helpful, giving poor advice, finally being
too critical was real and devastating.

She struggled on with the anxiety, right, causing depression. That actually
hurt her speed for which she got criticism, the first ever in her academic
work, and more stress and depression and finally real clinical depression. She
was in severe clinical depression the day she got her Ph.D. She never
recovered. She was visiting her family farm trying to recover, and she was
missing. Her body was found in a lake.

Yes, the OP is correct: Grad school can be a very destructive place.

(2) As a high school senior, I took the SAT twice and got over 750 both times.
At my high end, college preparatory, high school, of 1, 2, 3 on the Math SAT,
I was #2. So, eventually it became clear I had some math talent.

Well, I figured out I had some math talent in the 9th grade -- I ignored the
class and taught myself from the book and then made As on the tests. I
continued that way in high school math classes.

The extreme case was plane geometry -- I loved the subject. The teacher was
the nastiest teacher I ever had, so I slept in her class and refused to admit
doing any homework. But in fact, I solved every nontrivial problem in the
text, including the more difficult supplementary ones. On the state test, I
was #2 in the class; #1 was the guy who later beat me by a little on the SAT
Math.

I was a horrible student. Why? In grade school, my brother was ahead of me and
a good student. The teachers kept saying, "Oh you are Joe's [not his real
name] brother!". Well, from that start, anything I could do would be lower
than expectations. Moreover, I was a boy; all the teachers were women; I had
no social insight on how to please those women; my handwriting was awful; ...;
and I just gave up trying to please the teachers. The teachers talked to each
other so much that I was labeled as a bad student with a new teacher before I
even started her class. That's why I was a horrible student -- in grade
school, for me to please the teachers seemed just hopeless.

Well, that poor student approach continued in college: I nearly ignored every
subject but math and physics, was a math major, largely taught myself, did
some more advanced reading independently outside of class, took a reading
course from a high end, pure math text where I did all the talking, lectures
and exercises, and a prof just listened, and did write a math honors paper.

Then I worked for a while in applied math and computing on US national
security problems and later at FedEx. Learned a lot of math, job related and
also just good pure math.

Then I went to grad school. I already knew about enough for the qualifying
exams.

But I still preferred to work directly from some of the best texts. Class time
was mostly just writing exercise copying from the board. The real learning was
studying the text or class notes.

Eventually I saw a problem not solved in class; I didn't find a solution in
various relevant texts or the more famous relevant papers in the library so
took a "reading course" to investigate, maybe just write an expository paper,
on the problem. Well, it was a fun problem. I had some ideas and worked them
out sitting with my wife on our bed while she watched TV. Some of my ideas
were good, and I turned them into solid theorems and proofs. In two weeks, I
was done. Fast reading course! The credit I got was the last I needed for an
MS.

But it was clear that what I'd done was publishable. Later I did publish in
JOTA. One prof walked up to me in the hall and said "I heard about your
theorem: It says that for Brownian motion ...." Right. So, with that work,
original, publishable, done with no faculty direction, presto, bingo, I had a
halo.

Before grad school, I'd seen a problem. On an airplane flight I worked out an
intuitive solution. Some coursework in my first grad school year gave me
enough pure math background to turn my intuitive solution into solid math, and
I did that independently in my first summer; walked out of the library with a
50 page manuscript. That was the original research for my dissertation. Later
I wrote some illustrative software, polished my math, and that was it: There
was no real faculty direction. I stood for an oral exam defense and got my
Ph.D.

Lessons:

(1) For a Ph.D., the three most important things are research, research, and
research. If get some good research done early on, then can have a halo and
solid shield against criticism.

(2) It helps a lot to be able to be a poor student in courses. This way you
are used to criticism and don't take it seriously. Also you don't wear
yourself out trying to get a Ph.D. just from working hard in the courses or
pleasing the profs teaching the courses. Bluntly, can't get a Ph.D. just from
doing well in courses. Indeed, at the high end grad school I went to,
officially there was no coursework requirement for a Ph.D. Instead, the main
requirement was just research -- "An original contribution to knowledge worthy
of publication.". So, (A) I didn't burn myself out doing coursework. If I
didn't like a course or thought it wouldn't do much for me, then I didn't do
much in the course or just walked out. (B) But I DID work hard learning the
good material, and for that worked much as I had, largely independently, as
I'd done back to the 9th grade.

(3) Work independently. Don't ask or expect the faculty to do much or anything
to suggest problems, references, or approaches to solutions. Find your own
problem, maybe even before going to grad school. Start research on your
problem ASAP, in some sense in your first year or first summer. Before you and
the school agree you are working on your dissertation, have it essentially all
done, all but maybe some illustrative software and some polishing of the work,
e.g., maybe more references.

(4) For financial support, expect free tuition but no stipend. Have your own
source of food, clothing, shelter, etc.

(5) Stay close to math so that don't have to do lab work for some prof or for
your research.

(6) Pick a practical problem, get a good applied math solution building on
mostly some pure math, and call the work engineering. The usual criteria for
research are that the work be "new, correct, and significant." Well, can get
the "significant" part from the importance of the real problem. Can get the
"new" part from the particular math, somewhat new, for the new solution to the
new particular practical problem. The new, practical problem can stimulate and
justify some new math that otherwise might not be regarded as of value or
interest. For "correct", have the core of the work theorems and proofs which
are seen to be correct.

So, where my wife wore herself out trying to get praise from the profs, I was
willing to be a poor student and largely f'get about trying to get praise.
Where my wife wore herself out trying to wonder if her research was good
enough, I tried to do good research as I understood it and also that looked
good enough for the criterion of "worthy of publication". Looking for praise,
my wife was reluctant to do something original. I was ready to do something
original whether I would get praise or not. Indeed, back in plane geometry,
I'd taken a problem from outside of class, found a solution, after school
showed that nasty teacher, and she said "You can't do that". Later I
discovered that she was wrong and I'd reinvented a classic technique
_similitude_ and shown her. I didn't believe her. If are going to work with
things that are new, realize that will likely get a lot of people, hopefully
not quite everyone, saying that the work is not good.

What I did can sound like Ph.D. _hacking_. Well, not really: IIRC, at least at
one time the Web site of the Princeton math department just stated: (1) No
courses are given for preparation for the qualifying exams. Students are
expected to prepare for the qualifying exams on their own. (2) Courses are
introductions to research taught by experts in their fields. (3) Students
should have some research work in progress as soon as possible, hopefully in
their first year.

Well, that's basically what I did: I was already nearly prepared for the
qualifying exams before I got there. I had a research problem started before I
got there. The courses I worked hard on were good for my background and for my
research. The course where I got the problem that led to my paper in JOTA was
advanced enough that I could see a good unsolved problem.

~~~
DoctorOetker
I recognize many of your thoughts and observations (but not your achievements)
as my own, and agree on most points.

A corollary you do not make explicit: the university is to students/diplomes
as the prestigious publisher is to papers.

The student/researcher is expected to pay tuition and self-educate, and make
an intellectual contribution (thesis in case of university or paper in case of
publisher), for which if you pay the right price (enough years of tuition as a
student, or underpaid labour as a PhD in case of university or the review and
editing etc costs for a publisher) they are willing to issue a paper branded
with their certification mark or prestige.

Your examples illustrate we might effectively cut out the middleman of
universities as well.

Especially in the case of mathematics, it would seem that _correctness_ could
be mechanically verified by a proof verifier, _novelty_ by the lack of the
theorem and proof in some decentralized system (which only admits verified
proofs) and _significance_ I will leave open to the readers personal
preference of establishing.

Perhaps significance could be established by challenge? i.e. before publishing
your proof, you publish the theorem, and as time passes the reward increases,
so if the problem is hard nobody else finds a solution and your tradeoff is
low yield impatience or higher yield patience. If one or more people submit a
solution (or its hash) then there is a deadline (say a month or perhaps a
year) at which point everybody is expected to reveal the solution (original
claimant last, so if people bluff they can't force you to prematurely release
the solution). If multiple parties found a valid proof the rewards are split
by some predetermined method. Just thinking out loud how at least pure math
progress could be decentralized... The rewards you get could have a financial
value, or you could use thee crypto-value for rewarding people to formalize
supposed proofs from a text (if you have loads of texts that might interest
you if only you had the assurance that the proofs check out, i.e. perhaps a
substantial number of papers are bogus results!)

My condolences regarding your wife, that is a very sad story. And a perfect
example of how universities don't do what they are supposed to do: foster and
develop an individual's skills...

------
rdlecler1
Take someone with intelligence and options, have them spend 10+ years of their
life working toward something, and then give them a dead end job where it’s
difficult to switch careers because of over education and lack of experience.
No surprise here. Make these three year PhD programs at most. Don’t eat up
someone’s best years.

------
dnautics
The elephant in the room is that science is hard. You should expect failure to
be the dominant mode of operation and this is antithetical to healthy mental
state in general. As science progresses the low lying fruit get picked and
this becomes increasingly worse.

------
laretluval
I'd like to see a twin study on this. Maybe the direction of causality is that
academia attracts depressive people.

------
peter303
Did a postgrad do this study? :-)

------
taurath
This is like asking why programmers in the game industry have poor mental
health, or new doctors.

------
androck1
Why is Nature bringing this up only now, and why at all?

~~~
androck1
This was intended as a question of motives, not the value of the discussion.

------
megamindbrian2
When you ask for time off you risk being replaced by someone younger and more
energetic. When a research company loses funding you are told you fake the
need for emergency medical leave. No one is to blame, money is the devil, and
it's the only thing our government is good at controlling.

