Simmering Pressure: How Systemic Stress Impacts Graduate Student Mental Health

Graduate students suffer from issues with mental and emotional wellbeing at a high rate. While most commonly understood as an individual issue, the high prevalence of mental health problems suggests that their causes may extend beyond personal factors. A closer look at the environment that a graduate student operates in suggests systemic or organizational factors that exert notable pressures that students have to cope with. This article examines four levels of systems that create a structural environment that negatively impacts mental health and wellbeing among graduate students: (1) the academic system, (2) the institutional and departmental systems, (3) lab or cohort systems, and (4) the social-economic system. In light of this analysis, we propose a model of how systemic stress affects mental health. This model sheds light on the systems-level process improvements that can be instituted to help universities prevent mental health issues among graduate students.

Automated summary

Graduate students commonly face mental health issues which may be caused by systemic and organizational factors rather than just individual reasons. The academic system, institutional and departmental systems, lab or cohort systems, and social-economic system can all contribute to the negative impact on graduate student mental health.