The Graduate Student
mental health crisis
Mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression affect graduate students at disproportionately higher rates, leading experts to conclude that graduate students are facing a mental health crisis.
Our introductory episode features an interview with Dr. Nathan Vanderford, PhD, one of the lead authors on the ground-breaking Nature Biotechnology article published in 2018, "Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education". We then chat with Dr. Judith Cukor, PhD, a clinical psychologist at Weill Cornell Medical College, about what all of us, especially graduate students, can do to manage mental health struggles. We discuss how to identify red flags within ourselves and daily lives, find time and recognize the importance of self-care, learn how to manage our time, manage our imposter syndrome, and combat anxiety and depression. We also explore the systemic and institutional factors that may contribute to the graduate student mental health crisis with Dr. Hassan Muhammad, PhD, a recent PhD graduate from Weill Cornell. We then focus on the perspectives of two graduate students that have recently graduated: Dr. Caitlin Gilbert, PhD, and Dr. Farid Aboharb, PhD. Caitlin and Farid tell us about the mental health struggles they have faced on the way to achieving that hard-won degree.
