Mental health matters

My mental health this year has been up and down. It is not particularly clear why I have struggled at times, given the sources of stress were not particularly bad. Thankfully, now I am the best I have been all year. This may be because I have been quite proactive in taking action. First, there are the basics: adequate sleep, downtime, exercise, and diet. At one point I also cut out all caffeine and alcohol. I also went to the psychologist several times, did more mindfulness exercises, and increased my medication, in consultation with my doctor.

This experience underscores some of the complexities and associated poor understanding of both mental illness and healing. There are biomedical, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions. There is a high causal density, just like in public policy. Why did I get worse? Why did I get better? As a patient, I don't want to do a series of clinical trials on myself and just change one variable, one after the other. It is better to attack the problem by doing a lot of things that are generally believed to help.

Several people have brought to my attention a series of recent articles in Nature about the mental health of Ph.D. students. These include the following.

Nature’s survey of more than 6,000 graduate students reveals the turbulent nature of doctoral research. 
This stimulated an Editorial,
The mental health of PhD researchers demands urgent attention 
``Anxiety and depression in graduate students is worsening. The health of the next generation of researchers needs systemic change to research cultures.''

Both articles are worth reading, but depressing.

On the one hand, I think it is wonderful Nature is publicising the issue. On the other hand, to me, it is a case of corporate well-washing: where companies pass off responsibility for a problem they have helped create onto their employees or customers. Universities do similar things. If I was asked to name a for-profit company that has a negative influence on ``research culture'' over the past two decades it would be Nature Publishing Group, hands down!