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| PhD students particularly married-women experience more mental health problems |
In term of level, PhD degree is the highest educational level in the university. However, the study stated that the main problems caused the stressful situation are not resulted by the difficulties in studying process. In contrast, the mental health problems are caused from outside the university mostly. By quoting the problems, “these mental health problems are caused by the significant differences between work-family interface, job demands and control, supervisor’s leadership style, team decision-making culture, and perception of a career outside academia.
However, why the “occupation” becomes linked with the mental health problems? And what kind of mental problems that the PhD students experienced them?
Mental health problems have been reported to be linked with certain daily activities including occupations. Occupations are considered as one of the causes in generating stressful and depression for people because of the financial factors. For instance, survey conducted in 2011 in the UK found several jobs which associated to stress. The survey suggested sales, technical professions, managers and administrators were the type of occupations that were related to high risk of common mental disorders. The result is interesting as the technical and managerial jobs are commonly considered as high-salary jobs.
In the meantime, there are occupations that are related to mental health problems specifically for Alzheimer and Parkinson. Farmers, hairdressers, aircraft mechanics are linked to those two mental diseases. This association are depended on the high-exposed of chemical compounds such as pesticides on farmers, hair dyes on hairdressers, and toxic chemical compounds to aircraft mechanics. Perhaps, the same could have been happened to the PhD students throughout their needs in setting up scientific experiments and observations.
However, the referenced paper suggested that the reasons are not merely on the job demands and control. The work-family interface and perception of a career are also part of those reasons too. According to one of the references which were referenced by Levecque et al., reported that work-family conflict addressed the depression and stressful. Based on the writer’s opinion which also has activities in the university in Indonesia, the doctoral candidates particularly for married woman found difficulties in managing the family demands. For instance, the married-women must prepare the demands of their family activities daily including preparing the breakfast and dinner while at the same time they must do their dissertation to fulfil the academic requirements.
To conclude, academic activities generate possible reasons to affect the mental health problems. And most of them happen to PhD students particularly for women in several countries depending on the culture. Indonesians female are conflicted to the family-work relation in managing their time while studying as PhD students. Furthermore, time management is crucial to prevent mental health problems such stressful and depression which can cause to nerve related illness.
And how about the perception of career after PhD? Find out more in Aegle Physics
References
[1] K. Levecque, F. Anseel, A. De Beuckelaer, J. Van der Heyden and L. Gisle, "Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students," Research Policy, no. 46, pp. 868-879, 2017.