62 THE SCIENTIST | the-scientist.com
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n 2013, when Wendy Ingram was a
fourth-year graduate student in the
department of molecular and cell biology
at the University of California, Berkeley, a
classmate became severely depressed, took
a leave of absence from the program, and
eventually committed suicide. Ingram and
her friends were more than shocked. “We
were devastated, and we were frustrated,”
says Ingram, now a postdoc at Johns Hop-
kins University. “We saw gaps in care and
gaps in knowledge and gaps in under-
standing of what would have been helpful
things to do.”
Spurred by that heartbreaking loss,
Ingram and eight classmates in UC Berke-
ley’s Molecular Cell Biology (MCB) pro-
gram created the MCB Graduate Network.
The graduate student–led group orga-
nizes students-only discussions targeted to
each year of graduate training, where sea-
soned students talk with less-advanced col-
leagues about navigating the big milestones
of that year, such as picking a lab or taking
a qualifying exam. The program’s organiz-
ers also facilitate a mentorship program, in
which new students meet with two upper-
year students at least once a month during
the fall of their first year. Plus, the group
maintains a website that includes a list of
resources available to MCB students in a
variety of areas: mental health, physical
health, personal and legal support, career
development, and financial concerns.
Like many organizations promoting
graduate students’ mental health around
the US, the MCB Graduate Network is run
by and for students with support, but min-
imal involvement, from faculty and staff.
But there are calls to expand the institu-
tional footprint in this arena. Anecdotal
evidence from mental health practitioners
and students, and, more recently, research
findings, reveal that depression and anxi-ety are unusually prevalent among gradu-
ate students. And momentum is gather-
ing among institutional administrators
and principal investigators to respond by
offering better and more-appropriate sup-
port to their trainees.
“There always will be mental health
concerns” for graduate students, Brianne
Howard, the director of academic sup-
port at the University of British Columbia
(UBC), tells The Scientist. But institutions
can help, she says, by combining a proac-
tive approach—that is, finding out what the
stressors are and trying to mitigate them—
with efforts to make sure that faculty and
staff are ready to act when students are
really struggling.A widespread phenomenon
In 2017, Frederik Anseel, a psychologist
at King’s College London, and colleagues
compared mental health data from more
than 3,500 PhD students in Belgium to
those of people in the same age group
with similar educational backgrounds who
were not in graduate school. They found
that half the PhD students had experi-
enced recent psychological distress, and a
third were at risk for developing a psychi-
atric disorder such as depression. There
were twice as many mental health prob-
lems among the PhD students as in the
control group.
That difference surprised Anseel. He
explains that, starting grad school, PhDStudent organizations have long recognized the need for mental health support
during graduate school. No w, university staff are getting involved too.BY ABBY OLENALooking Inward