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: A 2009 APA survey found that 87 percent of psychology graduate students reported experiencing anxiety, and 68 percent reported symptoms of depression. Even suicidal thoughts — with a prevalence of 19 percent — were relatively common. "The numbers suggest we're certainly not immune [to mental health problems]," says Phil Kleespies, PhD, a psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System in West Roxbury, Mass., who co-led an inquiry on suicide risk among psychologists.... "Having a doctorate in psychology doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be able to deal with your own personal depression." According to a report from California's Student Mental Health Committee, today's students are "experiencing mental health problems that are qualitatively different [from] and significantly more complex" than past generations. The explosion of medications to treat mental illnesses has enabled people who may not have been able to handle the stresses of higher education without drugs to enter college and thrive. " A lot of different books and articles have been written about the crisis of campus mental health in the last ten or fifteen years, mainly looking at undergraduates," says Lisa Brandes, assistant dean for student affairs at Yale University in Connecticut. But mental health problems appear to be affecting graduate students as well. " Some of the graduate student mental health issues are just as serious or in some cases more serious than what we may be seeing in undergraduates," she adds. For people with mental illnesses, "the stress and structure of a graduate program can exacerbate their issues or [overwhelm] their coping skills." There's a saying that psychology research is actually "me-search," meaning that some people go into the field to understand themselves and deal with their own mental health concerns.