by Bill Sheate
What are your dreams and expectation of university?
As the 2024-25 academic year begins you may be embarking on your dream course, or maybe you have all sorts of expectations of what university life will be like. Give yourself time to settle in, make friends, socialise - your social network (and by that I mean in-real-life friends and colleagues!) will provide you with the base from which to celebrate the good stuff and cope with the problems in life.
Here are a few of the common issues many students find can end up occupying their time more than they would want ........ [Read more]
by Bill Sheate
Why a PhD peer support group?
Following Mental Health Awareness Week (week ending 31 May 2023), on 7 June I’m launching (and will facilitate) a new online PhD peer support group, open to any PhD/Doctoral student from any higher education institution.
The PhD/Doctoral Researcher Peer Support Group is open to any full or part-time student at any stage of a PhD/doctorate from any higher education institution and any discipline. It is aimed at addressing mental health and well-being issues, the sharing of PhD experiences, challenges at various stages of doctoral research, supervision problems etc. So may issues encountered by PhD/Doctoral research students are shared across disciplines and subjects, because doing a PhD is an unusual situation to find yourself in, as I’ve discussed before (see Rising to the mental health challenges of doing a PhD). Each meeting lasts 1.5 hrs every 2 months; attendance can be regular or occasional….. [Read more]
by Bill Sheate
The peculiarities of doing a PhD
Back in June 2021 I posted a blog on Rising to the mental health challenges of doing a PhD and how the peculiar circumstances of being a PhD student can affect how you respond to stressful situations. In December 2021 a new report (Hazell et al, 2021 [1]) was published that highlighted once again the high prevalence of depression and anxiety among PhD students in the UK, in line with recent studies in the US, Europe and internationally (e.g. Levecque et al, 2017; Satinsky et al, 2021).
So what's going on? Does it really mean that doing a PhD is bad for your mental health?……. [Read more]
