Social Stratification, Welfare, and Social Policy Seminar, at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI):

Anna Sandberg from SOFI here at Stockholm University present The impact of PhD studies on mental health care uptake

This is an in-person only event.

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Abstract

Recent survey evidence indicates a high prevalence of mental health problems among PhD students. Our study contributes to this literature by using high-quality administrative data on diagnosed mental health problems to explore mental health care uptake among PhD students. Our data allow us to follow the mental health care uptake of each individual PhD student before, during and after the they start their doctoral studies as well as to compare the mental health care uptake of PhD students to that of other relevant groups. We find that PhD students, in the years preceding their PhD, are prescribed psychiatric medication at rates similar to a sample of highly educated individuals, and at lower rates than the general population. However, following the start of the PhD program, the rate of prescriptions increases for PhD students relative to the other two groups. This increase starts in the first year of PhD studies and grows continuously over the course of the PhD program. Our estimates suggest that by the fifth year of PhD studies, prescriptions of psychiatric medication among PhD students have increased by about 40% relative to the year before PhD start. This increase is substantial and significant in all research fields except for medicine. While the absolute increase in mental health care uptake after starting PhD studies is similar for men and women, the relative increase is larger for men. We are currently exploring mechanisms behind these results, both in terms of individual level factors (e.g., family structure and socioeconomic background) and institutional factors (e.g., type of employment contract and gender composition of research fields).