Differentiating between the chiken and the egg brings no joy

This is one of those questions that may require a couple of years, generous funding and an ethics clearance to answer: Are PhD scholars more susceptible to depression than the rest of the population? Although I could not find any answer to this question, I can speculate that the answer is yes and I can venture to propose a couple of mechanisms that could explain this scenario.

WARNING: this post contains a great deal of speculation

There are many issues to consider such as what is the student's motivation to complete the PhD, what is the student's personality type, and the occurrence of other factors influencing the student's life that can enhance well-being or increase stress.

In relation to the movitation to conduct doctoral studies I would predict that people wanting a career change, enhance skills to increase employability or to get a promotion would be at higher risk of depression than those who are interested in self-improvement or complete their studies as a hobby. This is because there is less as stake for the second group where the PhD is an end on itself while the first group may hope to get a promotion or a better paying job after the time and money invested on the PhD. This would be particularly true for people wanting an academic career, which may depend on their performance during their candidature.

Although I could not find any evidence suggesting that personality types affect academic performance, it would be a fair assumption to expect that a significant proportion of graduate students are high achievers and perfectionists, particulalrly since getting a full scholarship is a competitive processes. Some personality types (sensu MBTI) have been found to have higher susceptibility to depression than others, as discussed in the apallinglly entitled article "Depression is a choice". Further, perfectionists are more susceptible to experience health problems than people with other personality types.

Finally, with the ever decreasing candidature and scholarship duration, the pressure to complete the PhD study "whithin the duration of the scholarship" can lead to a decrease of protective activities such as exercise, regular meals and social interaction. This is exemplified by the plight of Masters students who who were found to experience higher levels of fatigue and associated problems than Doctoral candidates by a study completed at the National Taiwan University. These students would be more likely to juggle study and work, have bigger study loads and shorter deadlines than Doctoral candidates, particulalrly since Masters scholarships, which will allow full-time study, are rarer than their Doctoral counterpats.

In conclussion, if you have the time, the money and access to all those personality and depression questionaires be my guest and tell me if I was way off the mark.

The evidence for pet theraphy

Pet theraphy, or animal assissted therapy, can be defined as the use of animals for the purpose of helping to improve specific aspects of the physical, mental, cognitive and social wellbeing of people. The most common forms of pet theraphy are the use of guide and hearing dogs as well as animal visitation programs for hospitals and nursing homes.

People traditionally benefiting from pet therapy are people with some need of assistance such as the visually impaired or hearing impaired; however, assistance dogs are currently being used for a range of conditions including epilepsy, autism and heart disease. Despite the obvious benefits of "working" dogs, the idea of pet therapy is that it increases your levels of activity and social interaction, and may help to decrease your blood pressure, cholesterol, triglyceride levels and of levels isolation.

The evidence for the benefits of pet therapy on depression is scarce. While conducting a brief internet search I found only one scholarly article that cited beneficial effects of pets for anxiety patients of varying degrees of severity. Although I did find an article that studied pet therapy and depression in adult college students (Bingo!), I could not determine if pet therapy was beneficial or not despite the reported significant differences between the effects of psychotherapy, pet therapy and a control group. This is because as a broke graduate students I could not pay $22.90 to download the article and satisfy my curiosity (but if you find out please let me know). However, there are several web pages suggesting that pet therapy can help with depression, ranging from health sites to the ones that try to sell you pet products (you name the sin, not the sinner).

Despite this, it appears to be common knowledge that having a pet can improve your mood, just type "depression and pet therapy" in any community page like yahoo answers or ezinearticles.com. Exercising outdoors, alone or with a pet, does help to treat depression. Having a pet has been shown to increase longevity, to provide more opportunities for social interactions (particulalrly of you have a labrador as opposed to a rottweiler), and to help you maintain your emotional health by providing increased opportunities for physical contact (if you are subscriber of the "four hugs a day" preciption).

Hence, provided that you can afford the time and the money investment required to own a pet, and that you are not allergic to one, I would suggest to go ahead and hope for the best.

Graduate students, depression and pet theraphy

Like 24% of graduate students surveyed by the 2004 Berkeley Graduate Student Mental Health Survey, I am between the moderately to severely depressed bracket. This is not uncommon for graduate students who unfortunately appear to have a higher incidence of depression and other related problems. What is unusual is the length of this depressive episode that appears to have lasted close to two and a half years compared with the average of 4 to 6 weeks for managed cases to up to 12 weeks for untreated cases.

As a result, I have tried everything under the sun from medication to meditation, from cognitive behavioral theraphy to exercise and dietary changes. All these can be useful and are part of my arsenal of tools to fight the black dog and try to complete my research. Unfortunately my experience is that some times individual tools or a combination of approaches seem to help for a while but I invariably return to the starting point following times of high stress.

Hence, I have run out of rational options, which leaves me with the following untested tools:

• A new pair of good socks - which will keep the depression away once I pull them up.
• Exorcism - I may actually be the victim of demonic possession and require the services of a priest to get rid of my depression.
• Pet therapy - something that gives me love, satisfaction and keeps my mind away from my PhD in my allocated rest times to help me to concentrate in my work time.

In the following weeks I will argue the need to keep a pet to help with depression, the many aspects to consider when selecting a pet, and the challenges of selling a pet to a highly reluctant husband... wish me luck.