Graduate school confers heightened risk for mental illness and suicide: Evidence from 630,948 U.S. adults

Graduate students are a vital component of the academic enterprise. They produce research, teach, mentor, and provide healthcare and other critical services. Evidence suggests that a large proportion of graduate students experience high levels of depression and anxiety, attracting the attention of policy makers. Yet past work has relied on cross-sectional surveys and samples that are small, non-representative, and lack appropriate benchmarks. Consequently, it remains unclear whether this apparent crisis is abating or worsening, and whether it is specific to graduate students or simply reflects surging levels of distress among young adults. We leveraged data acquired from 187,054 U.S. students between 2008 and 2019 to demonstrate that emotional distress, psychiatric illness, suicidality, and poor general health are disturbingly common and that these metrics have steadily deteriorated. We used data collected from 443,894 U.S. adults over the same 11-year period to show that graduate students are significantly more likely to experience mental illness, suicidality, and poor general health compared to their demographically matched non-student peers and the general public. These observations provide the first comprehensive analysis of the state of graduate student mental health in the U.S. and some of the strongest evidence that graduate training confers heightened risk for mental illness and suicide.