Image: Ari Campanaro is a third-year Ph.d. student and mental health supporter in the Community of Chemistry Graduate Students group. Campanaro said she didn’t realize anxiety was so common in graduate school, which is a diagnosis she’s been managing since she was an undergraduate student. (Courtesy of Ari Campanaro)
Ari Campanaro provides peer-to-peer support as growing evidence shows that graduate students are more likely to face mental health problems and diagnoses.
By Mikayla Scrignoli
When Ari Campanaro started her doctoral program in chemistry at the University of Minnesota in 2019, she knew she would face the anxiety she had managed since she was an undergraduate.
What she did not realize was how common such mental health issues were for her peers.
Studies show that graduate students face a number of mental health concerns and diagnoses that affect them along with a heavy course load, according to a report from the Council of Graduate Schools and The Jed Foundation.
One 2018 survey found that graduate students are six times more likely to experience mental health challenges and diagnoses than people not in grad school. The survey also found that 41% of graduate students reported dealing with anxiety and 39% with depression.
“I do believe that the high stress and expectations of grad school create an environment that may exacerbate current or developing mental health issues,” Campanaro said. “I think that the biggest challenge in grad school is that students are expected to push through and not take time to address their mental health.”
Campanaro wanted to change that. She reached out through the Community of Chemistry Graduate Students (CCGS) to help start its “grad-to-grad” initiative aimed at providing peer mental health support. She is one of the initiative’s four mental health supporters.
The initiative allows Campanaro to combine her passion for mental health advocacy with a clear need to support student mental health needs.
“When I started graduate school, I quickly found that anxiety was more common than I had previously thought and that mental health issues, in general, were present in graduate school,” she said.
“Grad-to-grad” provides chemistry graduate students the ability to reach out or attend the office hours of the mental health supporters, who are willing to talk about diagnoses like anxiety, eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Students can also come to them with other challenges that have a tendency to negatively impact mental health like imposter syndrome, feelings of self-doubt and the struggles of adjusting to life in a new country for international students.
Since Campanaro deals with anxiety as a Ph.D. student first-hand, she feels more open and passionate about being able to talk about it.
“For me, I would feel like I could talk to someone about something that I have first-hand experience with,” Campanaro said. “I would never sell myself as someone who has the answers to everything because I don’t. But I feel more well equipped to have a discussion or at least understand where someone is coming from for something that I’ve experienced myself or have had someone close to me experience.”
But with the fast-paced environment of graduate school, it can be difficult to find the time to seek support for mental health problems.
“It definitely is hard sometimes to balance [dealing with anxiety] with being a productive scientist. I have learned that sometimes I need to take a step back,” Campanaro said. “We often think that to do well in grad school, we need to work 24/7 and be productive every second of every day. It is so much more of a balancing act.”
The “grad-to-grad” initiative originated to address students’ needs, Campanaro said. After the Chemistry Department sent out a survey that asked about mental health, in conjunction with the positive feedback the group’s mental health panels were receiving, it was clear that chemistry students wanted additional mental health support.
That’s why CCGS’ mental health supporters, including Campanaro, underwent a modified version of the mental health training that faculty mental health advocates at the University of Minnesota complete. This training equipped them to step into their roles and to know where to point students to other resources if necessary.
For Campanaro, the work makes her a stronger scientist and a better human.
“It helped me to know that there were others dealing with similar things to me and they were finding success in grad school,” Campanaro said. “That is why I feel very passionate about sharing my experience. I want other students to know that they are not alone in their struggles. Their mental health does not define them as a graduate student or as a person.”