Title: Need to heal thyself?
Headings: Need to heal thyself?
Degree In Sight
Need to heal thyself?
To Tell or Not to Tell
Steps for Self-care
Letters to the Editor

Content: Those issues might sound familiar to many graduate students, but they were especially trying for Foster, who was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at age 17. " I would push myself really hard and feel sort of like I had exhausted my supply of energy," she says. Medication helped her cope, but some days the anxiety overwhelmed her. " I would just have to go home and give up the day and know that there was no way I would be able to get work done," she says. Foster feared that those lost days would cause her to fall behind her peers, and she felt frustrated with herself. Trying to handle grad school's heavy workload while still having a social life and maintaining a healthy lifestyle can be enough to stress anyone out, says John C. Norcross, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania who studies self-care and personal therapy among psychologists. These challenges can be especially daunting for students suffering from a mental illness, he notes. "Most studies of full-time doctoral students show they are routinely working 60-plus hours [a week]," he says. " And when you're working that many hours, self-care tends to plummet." Just how prevalent mental health problems are among graduate students is an open question.