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posted by Fnord666 on Monday April 02 2018, @12:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the constant-stress dept.

Poor mental health is an issue for many of our readers. That fact is underscored by the response to a tweet sent by @NatureNews earlier this week, which highlighted that rates of depression and anxiety reported by postgraduate students are six times higher than in the general population (T. M. Evans et al. Nature Biotechnol. 36, 282–284; 2018), and asked what should be done to help. The figures are a shock, but it was the reaction that blew us away: more than 1,200 retweets and around 170 replies.

“This is not one dimensional problem. Financial burden, hostile academia, red tape, tough job market, no proper career guidance. Take your pick,” read one. “Maybe being told day in, day out that the work you spend 10+ hrs a day, 6–7 days a week on isn’t good enough,” said another.

The feedback emphasizes something that Nature has highlighted often in recent years: there is a problem among young scientists. Too many have mental-health difficulties, and too many say that the demands of the role are partly to blame. Neither issue gets the attention it deserves. “I’d love to see some of the comments under this thread published,” wrote one responder. “There needs to be real conversation about this, not just observation.”

We agree — which is why we are publishing some of the responses. (You can read the full thread here.)


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday April 02 2018, @04:04PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday April 02 2018, @04:04PM (#661542)

    Counter argument is to think about folks trying to survive on minimum wage.

    You mean like young academics, who are often given a stipend that amounts to less than minimum wage?

    All of this is a side effect of the simple fact that many many college administrations have effectively declared war on their own faculty and other teaching staff. Many many deans of many many academic institutions are trying to ensure that everything that used to be done by tenured and highly paid faculty now gets done either by adjuncts that are getting maybe $14,000 a year to live on, or by administrators that have zero understanding of the subject matter being taught. Part of what is driving this impulse is political: Academics tend to be politically liberal and have sometimes been involved in liberal political activism, and many of these new administrations are controlled by political conservatives who are mad about that and want to punish the eggheads for it.

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    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
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