This interview study of 50 biology PhD students with depression examines how aspects of graduate teaching and research affect depression and how depression affects students’ experiences teaching and researching. This work identifies aspects of graduate school that PhD programs can target to improve mental health among graduate students.

Allowing students to voluntarily ask and answer questions in front of the whole class are common teaching practices used in college science courses. However, few studies have examined college science students’ perceptions of these practices, the extent to which students choose to engage in these practices, and what discourages students from participating. In this study, we surveyed 417 undergraduates at a research-intensive institution about their experiences asking and answering questions in large-enrollment college science courses. Specifically, students answered questions about to what extent they perceive voluntarily asking and answering questions in large-enrollment science courses is helpful to them and why. They also answered questions about to what extent they engage in asking and answering questions in large-enrollment college science courses and what factors could discourage them from participating. Using binary logistic regression, we examined whether there were differences among students of different demographic groups regarding their opinions about asking and answering questions. We found that overwhelmingly students reported that other students voluntarily asking and answering instructor questions is helpful to them. Notably, compared to continuing generation students, first-generation students were more likely to perceive other students asking questions to be helpful. Despite perceiving asking and answering questions to be helpful, over half of students reported that they never ask or answer questions in large-enrollment college science courses during a semester, and women were more likely than men to report never asking questions. We identified fear of negative evaluation, or students’ sense of dread associated with being unfavorably evaluated, as a primary factor influencing their decision to answer instructor questions. This work adds to a growing body of literature on student participation in large-enrollment college science courses and begins to uncover underlying factors influencing student participation.

This interview study of 24 undergraduates with depression examined how depression affects student cognitive domains when learning science online and how aspects of online science courses affect student depression. The study yielded recommendations about how to create inclusive online science courses for students with depression.

Allowing students to ask and answer questions is a common practice employed by college science instructors. However, recent literature has identified that women participate in whole-class discussions less often than men. One hypothesized reason for this gender gap is that women may be less comfortable participating.

Graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression compared to the general population and this growing problem has been declared a “graduate student mental health crisis.” Calls to identify what factors exacerbate student depression in graduate school followed. However, few studies have examined how graduate school specifically affects depression in Ph.D. students. In this qualitative interview study of 50 Ph.D. students with depression enrolled in 28 different life sciences graduate programs across the United States, we examined how research and teaching affect depression in Ph.D. students. Using inductive coding, we identified that experiencing failure, a lack of structure in research, and inadequate research mentorship were the primary aspects of graduate research negatively affecting graduate student depression. Conversely, teaching tended to have a positive effect on graduate student depression. Teaching provided positive reinforcement through positive interactions with undergraduates. Particularly, graduate students found that receiving positive feedback from students in their courses and watching students grow academically enforced positive perceptions of themselves as instructors, which protected against some depressive symptoms. This is the first study to examine how common aspects of graduate school affect depression in Ph.D. students. This work pinpoints specific aspects of Ph.D. programs, including creating structured research plans, creating opportunities for teaching, and providing frequent mentoring, that may improve mental health within the life sciences graduate student population.