Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students
By K. Levecque, Frederick Anseel, Alain de Beuckelaer, J. Heyden, L. Gisle. 2017
952 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Research policy observers are increasingly concerned about the potential impact of current academic working conditions on mental health, particularly in PhD students. The aim of the current study is threefold. First, we assess the prevalence of mental health problems in a representative sample of PhD students in Flanders, Belgium (N = 3659). Second, we compare PhD students to three other samples: (1) highly educated in the general population (N = 769); (2) highly educated employees (N = 592); and (3) higher education students (N = 333). Third, we assess those organizational factors relating to the role of PhD students that predict mental health status. Results based on 12 mental health symptoms (GHQ-12) showed that 32% of PhD students are at risk of having or developing a common psychiatric disorder, especially depression. This estimate was significantly higher than those obtained in the comparison groups. Organizational policies were significantly associated with the prevalence of mental health problems. Especially work-family interface, job demands and job control, the supervisor’s leadership style, team decision-making culture, and perception of a career outside academia are linked to mental health problems.
Subfields: General Health Professions, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ed50a0a58ef9ca3b603bbb160286936d5ffddef9
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In General Health Professions
In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
Citations in the corpus
- Factors that influence PhD candidates’ success: the importance of PhD project characteristics (2019, background): “Percentages of 39–47% of PhD students suffering from mental health problems such as anxiety and depression have been reported (e.g. Evans et al. 2018; Levecque et al. 2017).”
- Contribution of the doctoral education environment to PhD candidates’ mental health problems: a scoping review (2018, methodology): “La Touche (2017) investigated ‘lack of transparency’ as a key stressor.”