A new paper using Swedish administrative data documents a significant (40%) increase in the use of psychiatric medication among PhD students, across study fields (except for for medical and health sciences). The authors note that the proportion of active students receiving psychiatric medication in their sample was almost 14% in 2016 and note that this is comparable to US survey data suggesting almost 15% of PhD students in economics and 10-14% in political science receive treatment for mental health problems. The authors show that in Natural Sciences and Technology psychiatric medication use still higher 7 years after PhD, although this is not the case for Medicine and Social Science PhDs.
