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The largest mental health study ever conducted on researchers surveyed 138,000 PhD students and postdocs and found that nearly one in three are clinically depressed or anxious, and one in five has had suicidal thoughts

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that accumulates in academic research. It does not fit neatly into the categories medicine has built for suffering. It arrives in the gap between how meaningful the work is supposed to feel and how it actually feels at two in the morning, when a grant application is due and the last three papers have been rejected.Researchers at the University of Vienna just published the largest mental health study ever conducted on PhD students and postdocs. 138,000 researchers. 148 studies. Dozens of countries.Nearly one in three reported clinical levels of depression or anxiety.Nearly one in five reported suicidal ideation.And the rates were the same across every group measured. Same for men and women. Same across every academic discipline. Same in wealthy countries and poorer ones. Same in the first year of a PhD as in the final years of a postdoc.When a problem this severe does not cluster around any particular type of person, it is not a personal problem.5 headline optionsThe largest mental health study ever conducted on researchers surveyed 138,000 PhD students and postdocs and found that nearly one in three are clinically depressed or anxious, and one in five has had suicidal thoughtsA meta-analysis of 138,000 researchers found that depression rates in academia are three times higher than in age-matched peers, and the rates are identical across every gender, discipline, and country studiedResearchers analyzed mental health data from 138,000 PhD students across 148 studies and concluded that the academic system is producing widespread psychological harm at a scale that individual interventions cannot addressNearly one in three PhD students and postdocs meets clinical thresholds for depression or anxiety, and a new meta-analysis of 138,000 researchers says the cause is structural, not personalThe mental health crisis in academia is not limited to any particular type of researcher. A study of 138,000 people across 148 studies found the same rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation regardless of gender, discipline, or country.

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