The authors are recent PhD graduates who’ve all experienced anxiety during and after their doctoral program.

Here they share their story to support current doctoral students working to navigate and maintain a healthy work/life balance.

The lifestyle of graduate school has been associated with the presence of mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, in students during their academic programs. A 2013 analysis of the 2009 National College Health Assessment found that 61.3% of current graduate students reported ever feeling anxiety, with 43.8% feeling anxiety within the past 12 months. As recent graduates from a doctoral program, we’ve experienced this anxiety firsthand, and hope that our stories and recommendations can help to tackle this problem head-on.

Stress is an essential reaction to danger, a mechanism ingrained in us long ago to force a “fight” or “fly” response. However, it’s how we react to stress that impacts our long-term health, including the potential development of anxiety through cognitive distortions and unhealthy coping mechanisms. While we three may have already been naturally anxious people, this became increasingly heightened when under the stress of working on our PhDs.

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