Happy to announce our new website section Mental Health in cooperation with Scholar Minds, which is a self-organized-initiative of PhD students at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin trying to provide the Berlin neuroscience community with some relief.
Good mental health is related to mental and psychological well-being. It is all about how people think, feel, and behave.
Compared to the general population, graduate and PhD students are six times more likely to experience symptoms of depression and anxiety – a study conducted by Evans et al. (2018) suggests an enormous prevalence of moderate-to-severe depression in PhD students (39%). According to a recent survey of the Max Planck PhDnet, 53% of the students surveyed suffered from at least one of the following symptoms: depression, burnout, eating disorder, chronic fatigue, sleeplessness and migraines. More than half of this group thought that these symptoms were directly related to their position as a PhD.
Through sharing resources, surveying the status quo, and organizing mental health events, the Scholar Minds team hopes to promote awareness, destigmatize mental health struggles, and empower PhD students!