The Surprising Lessons Depression Taught Me

Today's guest post is by Nicole Cabrera Salazar. Nicole is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Georgia State University. She plans to pursue a career in science communication/outreach focusing on equity in STEM. 

Back in December I opened up about taking a break from writing my dissertation to focus on my mental health. As scary as it was to walk away from research, it turned out to be the right choice for me. Here, I highlight the lessons I learned during this difficult time.

1. Depression Lies

If you’ve never experienced depression, it can be hard to understand what it feels like. The best way I can describe it is that my brain was constantly lying to me. The very things that would have helped me overcome the depression were the things my brain was telling me to avoid. I withdrew from everyone around me, even though just a short phone call with my family would have made me feel better. I stayed in my apartment for days, when a brief walk outside would have lifted my spirits. My brain also said that I would never feel better. The hardest part was gathering the energy to actively fight those lies so I could start the process of getting better.

The Status of Mental Health in Planetary Science

This is a repost of Dr. Angela Zalucha's piece for the Women in Planetary Science Blog. Please see her original post here.

About Dr. Angela Zalucha: Angela Zalucha received her PhD in atmospheric science from MIT in 2010. She now works at the SETI Institute modeling the dynamics of planetary atmospheres. She currently lives in Boulder, CO where she enjoys skiing and volunteering in the clinic at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley.

I meant to write this article yesterday. That’s not a statement of procrastination. I suffer from depression, which was triggered a few years ago by events directly related to my career. The symptoms of depression are different from person to person. For me, I have to go lay in bed, in silence. Tasks like getting up to heat leftover pizza up in the microwave are insurmountable. So I wasn’t exactly up to the task of writing a blog article, even if it was about the condition I suffer from.

Grad School Blues

A few years back UC Berkeley did a study of the mental health of graduate students.  The results were quite astounding.

The study found that 67% of graduate students said they had felt hopeless at least once in the last year; 54% felt so depressed they had a hard time functioning; and nearly 10% said they had considered suicide (note that in the graph below shows considering suicide "frequently" or "all the time", thus the percentage difference).  Female respondents were more likely to report feeling hopeless, exhausted, sad, depressed, or suicidal. By comparison, an estimated 9.5% of American adults suffer from depressive disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.