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Mental Health in Graduate School

Graduate school is an exciting time in your life during which you get to learn many new things! However, graduate school is also oftentimes very stressful. You have likely moved away from your previous support system (family and friends) and find yourself in a new city with a potentially very different culture. Additionally, you have to balance coursework with teaching and research. You have to learn how to communicate with your PI as well as peers. As if that is not enough, you have to learn how to write publications and fellowship applications, which oftentimes comes with a lot of “failures” (in quotes because they are in fact very good learning experiences, but they often do not feel that way). It is completely normal to feel stressed. A little stress, or short-term stress (less than a week) can even be a good thing! It can motivate you to get your work done and help you to do a better job. Too much stress, on the other hand, can be very detrimental to you physically, mentally, emotionally, and academically. And many graduate students do feel too stressed (with approximately 1/3 of graduate students being at higher risk of anxiety and depression). So how do you know when you are too stressed? And if you think you are, what can you do about it? Check out the left column links/sources.

Please note that much of this content is based on the following ACS webinar: Demystifying Mental Health Support  This is a fantastic webinar and we recommend watching it if you have further questions!