Is Your Ph.D. Program Killing You?

The Real Mental Cost of Doctoral Research

Over dinner with a friend who had just completed his doctorate, I was reminded of how brutal the Ph.D. journey can be. Even just talking about our struggles felt taboo. The many difficulties Ph.D. students often encounter are rarely acknowledged by institutions and rarely admitted by candidates.

The cultural image of a doctorate is romantic: years of profound study under brilliant mentors, culminating in a triumphant defense. This narrative celebrates mastery, progress, and discovery. Reality, however, is less idyllic.

The ideals of curiosity and exploration are often overshadowed by the demands of institutional productivity. As a result, life as a doctoral student can feel like a constant cycle of deadlines, performance metrics, and uncertain career prospects.

For many students, the silence surrounding their struggles becomes a source of stress. Without open acknowledgment, each person assumes that they are the only one who is unable to cope. Stories of effortless brilliance — like the oft-repeated but undocumented legend of Wittgenstein telling his examiners they would never understand him — circulate more readily than stories of burnout.

The Psychological Toll

Large-scale studies (Friedrich et al., 2023; Keloharju et al., 2024; Satinsky et al., 2021; Mills et al., 2024; Akram et al., 2023) confirm my personal experience: today’s research culture can inspire, but it also exhausts the next generation of scholars.

Graduate students suffer from depression and anxiety at far higher rates than the general population. Evans et al. (2018) state that they are more than six times as likely to experience these conditions.

Six times is not a marginal difference — it is a miniature public health crisis.

The sources of distress are multiple. Collaboration, often promoted as a safeguard, can become a liability. Networks of co-authors sometimes provide camaraderie, but under tight deadlines and unclear responsibilities they increase stress. In large-scale projects, doctoral candidates may feel both indispensable and disposable.

Isolation compounds the problem, as remote collaborations rarely replicate the intellectual community of a campus. Many students spend weeks or months working alone, surfacing only to report progress to supervisors. In this vacuum, impostor syndrome thrives, self-doubt intensifies, and the question arises:

Do I really have what it takes to be a researcher?

The “publish-or-perish” imperative adds further strain. Every manuscript becomes a make-or-break moment; rejection can delay graduation or jeopardize funding.

Feedback, when it arrives, often feels adversarial. Sometimes, reviewers reject papers based on flawed grounds, something I have seen firsthand. Reviewers also sometimes reject papers on flawed reasoning, leaving the author confused as to why the paper was not accepted. Even when a strong paper eventually finds acceptance, the delay adds pressure and uncertainty.

The difficulty of publishing, the high level of competition between Ph.D. candidates, and the statistics produced by institutions to determine rankings create a strange situation. As Schneider puts it,

While there is certainly an inherent interest in the work being done and a passion to simply disseminate knowledge, job security and success are very quickly evaluated with one question: “What’s your number?” This results in an increase in stress and hours in the lab, a decrease in work-life balance, and mental health ultimately suffering. (Schneider, 2019)

The combination of insecurity, isolation, and metric-driven culture does not merely correlate with mental health struggles — it predicts them.

Surveys across institutions and countries reveal higher rates of mental illness among graduate students and a troubling reluctance to seek help, often due to stigma or fear of professional repercussions. Others simply lack access to timely, affordable care, given overburdened university services or impossible schedules. In such a climate, it is rare for distress to be addressed effectively.

Culture and Structure

In addition to personal difficulties, there are institutional aspects. First, the collaborative turn in science has transformed doctoral research. Large, multi-institutional projects bring visibility and prestige.

However, these projects often reduce student autonomy, and institutional incentives reinforce this pressure. As Nham Tran (2024) explains:

Universities and research institutes commonly use the rate of publications as a key indicator of research productivity and reputation. (…) Additionally, publications are closely tied to individual career advancement. They influence decisions on tenure, promotions and securing funding. (Nham, 2024)

These incentives influence the doctoral experience from the start. Supervisors, rewarded primarily for grants and publications, operate within a system where mentorship quality and student well-being carry little weight. Thus, the very definition of Ph.D. success becomes distorted.

Furthermore, things such as open research and sharing data can raise visibility, but also require additional, often unpaid, labor. As Callard (2022) notes, much of this work is invisible and unremunerated and done by graduate students. For students, it is yet another unacknowledged demand on limited time.

The structural nature of the problem is also well-documented. As Friedrich et al. (2023) emphasize:

Multiple studies show that the mental health status of people working in academia and especially that of Ph.D. students seems to be particularly detrimental when compared to the public. (…) [I]n particular Ph.D. students are affected by mental health problems. (Friedrich et al., 2023: 1–2)

Stress is inherent to the conditions of academic work. Unstable income, inconsistent mentorship, and inadequate mental health services, coupled with funding competition and high-stakes rankings, normalize burnout. The result is chronic time scarcity, where research, teaching, and grant work compete for attention.

The qualities most likely to generate transformative research — sustained focus, intellectual risk-taking, and profound engagement — are sacrificed for short-term, measurable outputs.

While institutions may gain in rankings, they lose the depth and originality necessary for serious scholarship. Students pay with their health, and institutions with their intellectual mission.

Building a Healthier Ph.D.

The answer to this problem is not lower standards, but standards designed with human limits in mind. Real reform means redefining productivity, rewarding mentorship, and recognizing the invisible labor of open science.

Friedrich et al. (2023) emphasize that supervision is the most urgent site of reform. They write:

The level of supervision seems to be the most urgent and promising target for an improvement of Ph.D. students’ situation. As supervisors are usually defining a project and its goals, but also additional teaching or other tasks, they are responsible for setting the workload and time constraints. (Friedrich et al., 2023)

Supervisors have the power to set project goals, workloads, and teaching duties. In other words, they determine the conditions under which students succeed or fail.

Institutions, therefore, must train, support, and reward supervisors for being effective mentors — not just prolific researchers. This includes clear supervision guidelines, management training, and formal recognition of their investment in students’ growth.

Supervisors are also in a position of power over Ph.D. students, which can lead to unhealthy relationships or, worse, clear abuse of power. Official ethical guidelines should establish appropriate boundaries between students and supervisors.

Open science, too, could shift from burden to asset if funders compensated the additional labor it requires. As Hostler (2023) argues,

open research advocates, particularly those with influence in universities, should engage more directly with issues of academic labour (…). When promoting open research reforms in universities or conducting open practices themselves they should advocate not only for investments in open research infrastructure and training but to receive extra time in workload allocations to acknowledge the additional burden of open research. (Hostler, 2023)

Open science is driven by the ideals of transparency and equitable access. However, these aims risk being undermined by increasing inequities in academic work if the behind-the-scenes labor is not recognized.

A Call to Action

Ph.D. programs are not inherently toxic, but many are structured so that burnout becomes the rule. Intense demands, distorted incentives, and career uncertainty create the perfect conditions for dysfunction. This is not about individual resilience — it is about systemic design.

A healthier doctoral ecosystem would value balance, offering reasonable workloads, supportive mentorship, fair collaboration, and realistic recognition of open science practices. These are not luxuries; they are prerequisites for innovation.

The essential question remains:

Is your Ph.D. allowing you to live the intellectual life it promised?

Closing this gap must become the top priority of graduate education. Although some institutions have begun reforms, progress remains insufficient.

My doctoral years were deeply enriching, but also marked by financial insecurity, personal life difficulties, and systemic pressures that persisted beyond earning my degree.

Struggles may remain the norm in higher education, especially as international competition puts more stress on institutions. However, if the academic community chooses differently, this need not be the case.

If you are a current or former Ph.D. student, how did your program shape your mental health — for better or worse? Sharing these stories matters.