In my last blog entry, I relayed some of the recent findings regarding graduate student mental health, the prevalence of mental health issues, and the groups considered at highest risk. I was surprised at the number of responses to this entry.  I want to thank everyone (friends, colleagues, and grad students from other programs) for their comments and emails.  In light of the responses, instead of writing Part 2 in the format I had planned, I am going to draw on some of the common threads presented in the responses (indicated in italics below). These are general threads and do not reveal any identifying information or personal stories that were shared with me.

In addressing these threads, my goals as outlined in the previous blog entry remain: I question university intervention in graduate student mental health, and, in conclusion, I ask what putting mental health in conversation with equity might mean.

Well, of course, these are the findings! Why are you surprised? and/or These findings confirm what I suspected.

A couple people wrote asking why I was surprised by the high rates of mental health issues experienced by graduate students. Of course, grad students are stressed, they claimed.  Others wrote about how the findings rang true to how graduate school has impacted their own mental health and the health of their friends and colleagues.  I want to clarify that I wasn’t surprised by the findings.  As many students’ emails signaled, grads are privy to anecdotal evidence that aspects of graduate school negatively impact the mental (and physical) health of our student communities. Since mental health issues are confidential issues, anecdotal examples may not provide privacy and anonymity. Moreover, anecdotal evidence, while significant and revealing, does not hold the scientific weight that university administrators require to revise institutional practices and policies. These studies provide students and their advocates with scientific research stressing the need for university administrations to make change.

Normalization of stress

Whether responses were more in line with “Why are you surprised that students are very stressed!” or indicated a personal connection to the findings, these responses were suggestive of the commonality of stress. In regards to stress experienced by graduate students, Hyun et al. (2007) are concerned with the high levels of stress normalized in graduate school.  Along with isolation, financial concerns, and a chilly academic climate for women, “graduate students are particularly vulnerable to pressures related to conducting research and teaching, publishing, and finding employment, in addition to stress from often ambiguous expectations from advisors.”   There is a dangerous slippage between understanding high-stress as a common experience and interpreting the banality of high-stress as a non-issue. The normalization of the high levels of stress is one of the primary barriers for graduate students in seeking mental health services (Louden and Skeem 2008).

Why not provide information about mental health resources to graduate students during orientation?

This idea seems simple. Certainly, the barriers to seeking mental health services are a focus of research study (Louden and Skeem 2008).  Orientation programs often acknowledge mental health services, particularly since many university students are the age for the onset of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.  Where are other points of intervention, particularly for graduate students?

One intervention would be the stand-up comedy event that was advertised in the email I cited in the beginning of my last blog entry.  The stand-up comedy event was meant to increase awareness of mental illness.  In searching for other intervention points, I read my university’s websites on wellness and health, and I emailed university contacts to ask what strategies are being employed to improve graduate student mental health. As far as anyone I contacted knew, there is no program or initiative working specifically to improve graduate student mental health.  My university does provide occasional workshops on stress-management, and there is a university-run counseling service centre to provide emergency and short-term counseling. From my search of university programs, the focus on mental health for students is mental health outcomes: providing information on services if a student has a mental illness, teaching students how to manage stress, and providing counseling under emergency conditions.  How do these efforts compare to the recommendations made by researchers?

In response to their research findings, Hyun et al. (2007) suggest shift in the pedagogical tradition of graduate school and more incentives to mentor and teach. (They note this is a move contrary to the ever-increasing rewards to conduct and publish research.) The authors recommend on-going pedagogical training for faculty.  Further, Hyun et al. press the need for university administrations to provide more funding for graduate student social events to abate graduate student isolation and for administrations to ensure adequate funding sources for graduate students.

What I find striking about the differences in approaches by my university and the recommendations by Hyun et al. is the “who” and “when” of intervention.  My university seems to focus on individual students’ mental health and, primarily, the mental health outcomes.  The recommendations made by researchers focus on institutional and community-based changes, and these changes focus on alleviating the stress created through graduate school practices.

The differences in these mental health strategies make me wonder: How do mental health interventions affect how we normalize mental health issues? What impact does mental health have on how graduate students are disciplined into academic subjecthood? And what do these approaches say about the uneven mental health effects on graduate student populations? Do we only think that s/he can’t handle the stress of graduate school?  Or do we take into consideration how the banal practices of graduate school differently (and inequitably) affect students?

What would it mean to put mental health issues in conversation with equity issues?

This fall, the UBC Centre for Race, Aging, Gender and Autobiography (RAGA) brought University of Alberta’s Professor Malinda Smith to campus to participate in a diversity workshop and conduct a public talk. Smith’s lecture focused on universities’ artful dodging of equity issues; rights-discourses are subsumed by multiculturalism and neo-liberal values.  Smith suggests that white women in the academy need to recall their history of solidarity with black feminists, lesbian and gay groups, and people of color that allowed white women to gain entry into the academy.  With this history in mind, Smith argues white women must work in solidarity with groups who are fighting for more access to the academy.  At the time of her talk, I was beginning to write notes on this blog topic, and Smith’s lecture made me wonder how graduate student mental health issues fit with equity issues and neo-liberal values as practiced at the university.

Are university mental health care practices slipping into neo-liberal frameworks?  Proponents of neo-liberal values might evoke the supposed non-racism and non-hetero-sexism of neo-liberalism.   Do current university practices work to individuate the negative mental health outcomes of graduate programs?  And does this process of individuation help to obscure structural racism and hetero-sexism that could be linked to mental health issues?

Contrary to values of university audit cultures, pedagogy is offered as valuable  means of alleviating the crisis in graduate student mental health.  What might faculty re-training in pedagogy look like?   The crisis in graduate student mental health, particularly concerning the high risk groups of women, people of color and LBGTQ communities, makes an incredibly pressing call for practitioners of critical and feminist pedagogies.

Why are graduate student mental health issues disconnected from those of equity? As I looked through university equity literature, I couldn’t find any programs or policies regarding grad mental health.  Graduate student mental health issues do not seem to be connected with rights to/within the university.  As Smith called for white women of the university to work in solidarity, I am wondering if changing university structures on the grounds of a crisis in mental health might be one strategy for better equity policies and practices.  I will end this entry with this idea, and I look forward to any comments about how equity and graduate student mental health might be put in conversation.

Notes

Along with those I have already thanked at the beginning of this blog entry, I would like to thank Alice Campbell, Erica Hamilton and Megan Milks for their support and ideas.

References

Brandes, L. 2008  Graduate Student Mental Health Issues. Presented at the 2008 Meeting Canadian Association of Graduate Schools Edmonton, Alberta.

 Louden J E and J Skeem. 2008 Results of UC Irvine Survey of graduate students’ mental health.  Slide presentation available at: www.grad.uci.edu/forms/students/SurveyResultsJS.pdf

Hyun, J K, B C Quinn, T Madon, and S Lustig 2007 Mental Health Need, Awareness, and Use of Counseling Services Among International Graduate Students Journal of American College Health 56(2): 109-118.

Hyun, J K, B C Quinn, T Madon, and S Lustig 2006  Graduate Student Mental Health: Needs Assessment and Utilization of Counseling Services Journal of College Student Development 47(3): 247-266.

Smith M  2009 "Storytelling about the Practice of Equity and Diversity" presented at the University of British Columbia, sponsored by the UBC Centre on Race, Aging, Gender, and Autobiography.

Also of interest:

Norgueira-Martins et al. 2004 The mental health of graduate students at the Federal University of Sao Paul: a preliminary report Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research 37:1519-1524.

Pallos, Henrik et al. 2005 Graduate Student Blues: The Situation in Japan Journal of College Student Psychotherapy 20(2):5-15  (thanks to Claire Wooten for this reference)