The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands. A number of factors contribute to how well people adapt to adversities, including the ways in which individuals view and engage with the world, the availability and quality of social resources, and specific coping strategies.” 1
Chances are most of us have encountered life experiences where we needed to learn to be resilient– I know I have. Growing up in a dysfunctional family and in a developing country, resilience almost felt like second nature. I needed to find ways to mentally survive, specially as a child when many situations are outside of my control. For a long time, I thought this type of survival was a normal part of the human experience and I just needed to keep rolling with the punches. While survival tactics helped me through childhood, I found that in my adult life they can have a detrimental effect. As an adult child of a dysfunctional family and a codependent, I was taught early on to not talk, trust or feel and to be nice. While these tools worked for me when I was growing up, as an adult they stopped working and backfired, leading to emotional rock bottom. I was unconscious of these survival tactics for years but something felt off. Why was I so mentally tired, and did I really need to suffer through everything in life?
The PhD program presented no different for me, and as I was ill-equipped, I continued to use my survival tactics while not being able to identify my feelings or work through them and share them with my peers. If conversations with hints of mental health discussions raised, for a long time I would listen and try to understand yet not be able to relate or share any personal experience.
Research from Evans et al states that “graduate students have been resilient for generations; resilience can only bring us so far.”2 Even though graduate students in graduate programs come from all walks of life, they are all going through similar versions of academic dysfunction with some of the outer actions seeming different, yet the core traits remain the same. The years of constant emotional and psychological stress endured by one in graduate school is not healthy and could have a long-term impact on health. There seems to be some change underway2 although it feels it is going too slowly and may be tough to implement uniformly throughout different institutions. I wonder: how much input do graduate students have on these programs, what are the variables of the program going from large institutions to small research universities? With the current political climate, are there funds disposable to address this issue? What percentage of advisors are truly on board and not just going through the motions of these implementations? How long would it take for students to feel that their relationship with their advisors will be safe to openly discuss future issues?
If you are currently in graduate school while reading this, my heart goes out to you, and I hope you can find someone safe to share your experiences. Take care of yourself.
1 https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience
2 Evans, Teresa M., et al. “Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education.” Nature biotechnology 36.3 (2018): 282-284.
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