Depression – Coming Clean About the Road to the Ph.D.

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I witnessed a very courageous act a few days ago. A tenured university professor admitted to the entire Interwebs her battle with debilitating depression. Why was this such a simple act of bravery? Because so many people experience the same debilitating issue and yet no one ever talks about it.

I was one of those people

I can relate wholeheartedly to Dr. Coleman’s daringly honest essay on her struggle with depression. When I look back at my grad school years, I recall most vividly the moments that don’t appear anywhere on my academic resume. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was far from alone. Life happens along the way to the Ph.D. and oftentimes so does depression.

I remember struggling to get out of bed everyday

Anyone who has lived through an episode of clinical depression can relate to the extreme feelings of lethargy. I slept. I ate. I overslept. I walked around in a daze. I felt overwhelmed. I dissolved in tears at the very hint of criticism that I took entirely to heart and far too personally. I counted down the minutes until I could leave campus to crawl back in bed again. I came home and cried my eyes out. There were many days where I had to fight tears back because they threatened to spill over in public.

I remember almost quitting

April 2004 marked the end of my first year of my doctoral program. As the semester was coming to a close, I seriously contemplating quitting, and confessed these feelings to my faculty advisor, family, and a few trusted friends. I did not quit, but I struggled with the symptoms of clinical depression for most of grad school career, and contemplated quitting every time a new semester rolled around.

I was lucky. At every critical juncture of “I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” there was a little angel on my side persuading me to continue the course. These angels appeared in the form of family members, Sisterfriends, and surprisingly enough, even women I e-knew from an internet forum dedicated to hair care.

There were also a lot of people who didn’t quite seem to understand. After all, “my problems” weren’t like theirs and “at least” I wasn’t struggling like they were. And still others’ message to help was “I didn’t have time to be depressed.” And for awhile I was very unwilling to accept the fact that maybe I needed help.

I didn’t quit but I did seek out help

There is something extremely telling about academic culture and the nature of mental health stigma when you’re studying for your Ph.D. in psychology and feel some kinda way about admitting a common issue like struggling with depression. I was deathly afraid it would affect my credibility or perceptions of my competence. This fear was especially heightened because I already stood as one of the only faces of color in the crowd.

My big, dirty secret that shows up nowhere on my academic resume, emails, or status updates on Facebook is that I struggled with depression on the road to the Ph.D. This is the hidden “shameful” thing that people would rather act as if doesn’t exist and yet it is a common experience. I was fortune enough to learn how to manage the depression well-enough to at least finish, but there are others that I know for a fact did not make it.

You Are Not Alone

Depression is often the red-headed stepchild of “success” on the road to obtaining just about any graduate degree you can think of. I wrote this article in order to promote awareness. Coming clean means being honest. YOU are not alone. YOU do not have a personal weakness or major character flaw. All of the problems you are grappling with and feelings you are experiencing are just as valid as anyone else’s.

And yes, even this too, can be overcome

Please do me a favor. I would like this article to reach as many people as possible – some who are struggling silently with depression. If this article resonated with you or vibed with the experience of someone you know, please share the article with others – email, Facebook, Twitter. Let’s get the message out there so that depression isn’t a dirty little secret to prevent anyone from maximizing their shine – in grad school or not.

Tagged as: depression