How are you feeling today? – examining the health and well-being of PhD candidates at LTH

Abstract

How are you feeling today? Perhaps that is the question that a supervisor needs to ask first his or her PhD candidate every time they meet instead of how is your work progress. The transition from undergraduate or masters learning environment to the PhD research environment is a total turnover. The PhD candidate needs to assimilate oneself in this research climate. The focus of attention must not only be on the work progress but equal emphasis must be put upon the health and well-being of the candidate. A great deal of attention has been paid on issues of supervision, submission and completion, drop-out but less focus on the health and well being of this cohort. Due to this importance, this article examines what the path of a PhD candidate look like and also the issues on health and well being and its correlation to the research climate. A small scale study was performed to understand the current health and well-being of the PhD candidates at LTH. The respondents of 24 PhD candidates do agree that in general they feel healthy. But probing further into the mental health, vitality, behavioral stress, somatic stress and cognitive stress there is a trend of negativity surfaces. These preliminary results merit serious attention from the university’s management to examine further the research climate and environment that this group faces.