From: Alan Hall <oldeddoc**At_Symbol_Here**GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] More than one-third of graduate students report being depressed
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2018 23:31:43 -0500
Reply-To: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Message-ID: CALDugaYrvpcgaNZW2yDgG02hQUa9SWZAe6fMYE4NEMnYT2WCcg**At_Symbol_Here**mail.gmail.com
In-Reply-To


Dr. Stephen Coburn,

Kudos and all due respect for the things you have done in this area. You deserve a great deal of respect for your efforts. You certainly have mine.

I'm an old UIPUI guy myself (BA, IUSB; MD, IU School of Medicine).

The hardest part I've had to deal with in a past life was seeing psych patients in emergency departments, becaue there's no worse settinge ither for them, the staff, or the other patients. The old saw: "If it's cold and you don't know what to do with it, take it to the morgue. If it's warm and you don't know what to do with it, take it to the Emergenmcy Department" is such a dis-service to patients with mental health issues. And the falling-apart of the long-term residential facilitities (one of which I used to volunteer at when I was an undergrad) in lieu of 6 weeks, stabilize on meds, release and send back for community mental health clinic follow-up only lead to a "revolving door" that certainly dismayed and troubled all of us who saw its failings.

I do think that better policies for early intervention are needed, but should be guided by valid research (even if it's in the "soft" sciences -- I was a sociology major undergrad). I firmly believe the Law of Unintended Consequences is very alive and very unwell.

And perhaps Kali's comments are correct. Maybe we should dissociate the issues of valid science and what might reasonably be done to address these issues. Just not media hype and reactionary nonsense.

Alan
AlanH. Hall, M.D.
Medical Toxicologist
Indiana Schoolf of Medicine, Class of 1977

On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 2:03 PM, Stephen Coburn <coburn**At_Symbol_Here**pfw.edu> wrote:

Because we have a family member with mental illness, we have become active in the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), which provides a variety of support for persons with mental illness and their families. There are clubs on many campuses (https://www.nami.org/Get-Involved/NAMI-on-Campus). If there is no formal activity on campus, there may be a support group in the community which would welcome anyone including students. NAMI support groups are persons with mental illness or family members who share their experiences and assist others in dealing with the challenges of obtaining treatment, staying on their medications, dealing with side effects, etc. Usually one of the most helpful aspects for newcomers is that they realize immediately that the members of the group are dealing with the same problems and understand exactly how they are feeling. NAMI also offers several education programs to provide information about how the brain functions, the different types of mental illness, medications and techniques for dealing with the various behaviors. NAMI could be a valuable resource for students dealing with depression or other forms of mental illness.

Stephen Coburn, Ph.D.

Professor emeritus

Indiana Univ. - Purdue Univ. at Fort Wayne

From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU> On Behalf Of Kali Serrano
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2018 11:45 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] More than one-third of graduate students report being depressed

No ill intent assumed at all, don't worry. I appreciate the open and direct nature of this group.

I agree 100% with all the points about the rigor of these research studies. In addition, I agree that there is confirmation bias in my statements. Maybe these two conversations about the scientific validity of these studies and mental health resources need to be decoupled because they are both necessary and maybe somewhat independent. This topic seems like it's still in it's infancy so we still have a lot of work to get more significant statistics, figure out the causes of this depression (chicken and egg issue, are previously-depressed students drawn to these career paths or are these career paths making people depressed), making sure to exclude confirmation bias, and everything else that people have aptly pointed out so far on the listserv.

I would like to play devil's advocate though and point out that this is ironically the same response that many graduate students get when they approach administration and ask for change. I think it is relatively well established that this exists as an issue (although the extent and details are of course still up for debate). However, people get stuck on the details rather than discussing ways to provide resources for students. I'd be interested to hear, what do other institutions do to address this problem?

Best,

Kali

On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 8:33 AM, Alan Hall <oldeddoc**At_Symbol_Here**gmail.com> wrote:

Et al,

Another point. How do the statistics from this study compare to prevalence/incidence (not the same thing) data from various reference groups such as the general US or appropriate internatialonal country(ies) population(s)? A variety of other reference groups could be chosen as well.

If it turns out that by self-report on a questionairre that X% of a certain "everybody" group has the same or statistically non-significantly differnt prevalence/incidence, then maybe all this means is that X% of "everybody" has similar mental health issues? Be interesting to see some comparisons.

Like Rob, I don't denigrate anybody's personal experiences. One of my old and wise Medical School Professors said: "It's 100% when it's you". (He also said: "Minor surgery is surgery on someody else.")

I, too, dislike "junk" science that get's widely distributed and misinterpreted and results in policy decisions that have the potential to do more harm than good. The Law of Unintended Consequences is alive and unwell in the world.

Alan

Alan H. Hall, M.D.

Medical Toxicologist

On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 9:08 PM, ILPI Support <support**At_Symbol_Here**ilpi.com> wrote:

Kali, I agree it is easy to empathize or see ourselves in these same situations. And it's great to hear that your institution is being proactive (and I would wager it's not just at the graduate level). Certainly more can be done. These same issues affect every single other aspect of their lives whether at K12, college, grad school, church, employment, home, youth group, whatever. Mental health does not check itself at the door and it's good to remind ourselves of it, which is why I believe Ralph raised the point in the first place. And it's generating good discussion as it should. That said, the following comments are meant to expand and educate so please do not take these with any ill intent as none is meant.

As a scientist, I have to say the paper is NOT scientifically valid. No doubt, these findings will appear in mass media as "a blah-blah study has shown-" and everyone who references it from then on will be too lazy to look up the original work like I did and critically assess it. This paper hasn=E2=80™t shown anything other than anecdotal evidence because the data (by the authors' own admission) are not reliable and therefore the conclusions are not supported. As scientists, we must critically read and assess information. We must challenge interpretations/conclusions and see if they hold up to scientific rigor, not simply accept what the author wrote. Every developing scientist must learn the art of critically assessing the works of others. The literature is full of irreproducible studies and general junk.

Your statement "I can definitely believe=E2=80=A6" indicates confirmation bias, i.e. that you are predisposed to believe the results without further inspection because they align with your own experience. It's human nature and we all tend to do it, so I understand that. On top of that, when we tell stories, we tell the ones of adversity and challenge not "everything's going OK", so we hear more anecdotal evidence that reinforces our viewpoint that life is tough/hell/whatever in graduate school. But none of that makes these statistics true and, again, they are presented in pretty much a vacuum, so calls along the lines off "we have to act now, this is a crisis" etc. are, at best, premature. Hastily enacted responses will do little to effect even a modicum of change unless we have actual facts on which to base those actions.

I hope I am clear that I am not in any way dismissing the potential scope of these issues. When I was in graduate school I had many peers who dealt with such issues, including a close friend I will call X who was suicidal to the point that X had it all planned out (which chemicals and how). It took a very long time and a couple invocations of the "call me before you do anything" promise before I could convince this person to seek counseling. In the end, everything turned out good, except that when this person applied for health insurance after graduation, X was denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition (e.g. having sought treatment for clinical depression). Yep, penalized for doing the right thing for his/her health. It's much less of an insurance risk if someone hides it well instead of treating it (roll eyes, insert sarcasm emojis here). Something to think about if Congress brings up the idea of allowing that pre-existing condition BS again under the pretense of "affordable" plans and "choice".

Rob Toreki

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On Mar 27, 2018, at 5:41 PM, Kali Serrano <kaliserrano8**At_Symbol_Here**GMAIL.COM> wrote:

Hi All,

Although I agree that there is room for improvement in these studies, I can definitely believe the number from the Nature article. From the perspective of someone in graduate school, many of my colleagues suffer from the exact issues that Margaret and Ralph have listed. In addition, part of the problem is also that faculty are hired to be good researchers, not necessarily managers. So, there are many avoidable stresses that are due simply to misunderstandings and unclear expectations. Or, sometimes these issues stem from (usually inadvertent) emotional abuse when advisors are trying to motivate their students to work harder..

It's refreshing to see that this is beginning to be a topic of conversation on many online platforms. Now that people are more comfortable acknowledging it, institutions just need to figure out the best way to address the problem and more research needs to be done.. These needs to be tackled by both (1) identifying systemic causes of depression that are institution-dependent and preventable and (2) providing easily-accessible resources for students. I am fortunate at my institution that our insurance covers at least initial screenings and therapy sessions should students need it. Our department sends out reminders twice each semester to point students to resources on campus for mental health education and counseling. In addition, we have annual department surveys and these topics are included in the last section along with a suggestions box. In my opinion, this should be the baseline for all institutions because even this has a lot of room for improvement.

When we talk about safety in chemistry-related programs, there is also mental health safety that has come up as a subset of this conversation in many institutions. I think it's good that Ralph brings this up on the listserv so that we can keep up with the changing times as a Division.

Best,

Kali

On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:49 PM, ILPI Support <info**At_Symbol_Here**ilpi.com> wrote:

I'll just toss into this mix:

1. Very early in the article it is stated "Although this is a convenience sample in which respondents who have had a history of anxiety or depression may have been more apt to respond to the survey, the data should prompt both academia and policy makers to consider intervention strategies." NO, it should encourage a REAL study with REAL controls to replace this junk science. And some wonder why social sciences are called "soft science".

2. This "study" is apparently looking at graduate students without also looking at all students on the campus, so it is flawed by design. The word "undergraduate" does not even appear in it, the authors instead choosing to make comparisons to "the general population", a term which is not even defined in the paper and is a dubious cohort comparison. The proposed "intervention strategies" may or may not be unique to the graduate population, and one could certainly devise better ones looking at the entire campus population to find the lowest hanging fruit (most impact for effort). BTW, at our local University (primarily undergraduate) the student mental health services are so backed up they have a months-long waiting list and I hear this is not uncommon at other schools.

3. Is there any evidence this proportion has grown or decreased over time? I would hypothesize that with greater recognition of diversity, equality, and fairness versus say, my peers who went to grad school in the 70's who have all sorts of horror stories/experiences that were ignored then but would today result in faculty censure/crucifixation, that the trend would be downward. A trend would indicate possible strategies assuming a causative correlation could be established.

4. Conversely, if the trend is upward, is it possible that students are increasingly unprepared and unqualified to be in grad school? We see this at the college freshman level where significant numbers of students require at least one remedial course (e.g. are not prepared for college), a trend that appears to be increasing: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/colleges-enroll-students-arent-prepared-higher-education It would be interesting to know if this follows through to the graduate level AND if level or preparedness/ability correlates to the anxiety/depression. If you're not capable and/or are suffering imposter syndrome, then anxiety and depression would logically follow.

The topic is very much worthwhile and important, but the work referenced here is NOT the way to study it. If I were a reviewer I would have rejected this paper which seems to me to be presenting data not much better than a poll you'd find on Buzzfeed.

Rob "tell me how you really feel" Toreki

======================================================

Safety Emporium - Lab & Safety Supplies featuring brand names

you know and trust. Visit us at http://www.SafetyEmporium.com

Fax: (856) 553-6154, PO Box 1003, Blackwood, NJ 08012

On Mar 27, 2018, at 1:58 PM, Stuart, Ralph <Ralph.Stuart**At_Symbol_Here**KEENE.EDU> wrote:

It is the constant stress of trying to get your project to work, hitting one dead end after another, and having to 'compete' for your advisor's attention that I would think is causing a lot of the problems.


Related to this, I have read that one issue that many graduate students, particularly in biosciences, struggle with is that their research has become so specialized that they aren't sure that they are learning any transferable skills that will help in the non-academic job market. I can imagine that a lack of a clear career ladder would have a significant impact on morale.


I do think that there needs to be more acceptance and even promotion of college mental health services;


I agree that this is an important resource. According to people with experience in both sectors, one of the big differences between academic and industrial labs is that managers of industrial labs have significantly more training and focus on managing people and work groups than in academic labs. Mental health services are important support systems when academic research managers are over-stretched by teaching and service responsibilities as well as research oversight.

Interestingly, I have also read that the most depressed faculty members are those who have just received tenure. This is because at that point their teaching and service expectations are increased to help younger faculty who are being supported in their research work by the institutional investments. It's been my experience that academia is quite a complex culture to operate in, which is why it's so interesting on an ongoing basis.

- Ralph

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
Environmental Safety Manager
Keene State College
603 358-2859

ralph.stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu

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Kali A. Serrano

NSF Graduate Research Fellow

Braun Research Group

Department of Chemistry

3714 Beckman Institute, MC-251

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Kali A. Serrano

NSF Graduate Research Fellow

Braun Research Group

Department of Chemistry

3714 Beckman Institute, MC-251

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

224-406-1714 | mille138**At_Symbol_Here**illinois.edu

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