This is my kind of article! Let's start off a discussion about our doctoral programs by sharing the time they made us suicidal!

One surprising thing about this article is that it was written at all. Definitely in my day we did NOT discuss these matters until maybe the moment right before, when hopefully it was not too late. Another surprising thing is the sheer numbers involved. Going through this kind of thing naturally one feels all alone, but if you had asked me in later years how many other grad students at Berkeley I'd guess also suffered from depression I would have told you 10, maybe as many as 15 percent.

The number at UC Berkeley cited in the article is 47% - almost half of all grad students and, interestingly enough, very close to the number of people accepted into doctoral programs there who do not finish (Coincidence? I think not!) You can check the exact number with Grad Div, but I warn you they don't like giving it out.

Looking back, I suppose I could take comfort in knowing that many of my cohort were as unhappy as I was, but, as that old Genesis song goes, it hardly seems to matter now.

http://qz.com/547641/theres-an-awful-cost-to-getting-a-phd-that-no-one-talks-about/