I am near the end of the PhD, but my funding has finished and so I have needed to work. Long story short, I took a job I hate, which I have done for about 6 weeks. By last week, it made me feel so bad that I have been signed off for it with anxiety and depression, and put on anti-depressants. The PhD is not behind this at all, but I don't know if I have a duty to tell my Supervisor about this situation or not. Thoughts, please! :)

Hi Happyclappy,

You do not have an obligation to disclose this information to anyone, including your supervisor, unless you choose. So you might want to think about why it is you want to tell your supervisor-is it because the depression and job have meant that your work has fallen behind? Or something similar?

If telling your supervisor would be helpful to you and would enable you to get back to doctoral work productively (or will enable you to enlist your sup's support in an extension or similar) then you might want to tell them. You also want to be fairly sure that you trust your supervisor and that disclosing this information would not have further implications or ramifications down the track.

So- in a nutshell- my opinion would be that if you believe that telling your supervisor this information will help you, and/or support you through this challenging period-and you trust your supervisor and believe that telling them will not affect any future prospects, then do so.

If you are unsure about these things, then I would merely say (if you had to say anything) that you have experienced a period of ill health recently (doctors will not disclose the type of illness you have on a medical certificate) and you need a bit of time to recover. I only say this, not because there is anything shameful around experiencing depression but because sometimes people have a poor understanding of what depression is. And, as mentioned earlier, you are not obliged to disclose or make public the nature of any illness you may have (whatever it is) unless you choose to do so.

I hope this is helpful and wish you the best in term's of recovery and with regard to your PhD and its completion. Take care HP :)

I'm going to be controversial here and say I'm not sure your PhD has nothing to do with it. 6 weeks is a very short time to work anywhere for it to have made you so ill to the point you are clinically depressed. Unless of course you already have depressive illness in the past and working is added stress that triggers it or you're in one of those jobs where you're working nightshifts or not getting adequate breaks.

I suggest it's more likely the combination fo the two. You are doing really well getting your PhD finished and working at the same time must be very difficult. Be kind to yourself, you're doing a lot. Maybe you need to consider that you can't do full time work atm because of your illness and when your funding ends you would probably be eligible to claim sickness benefit (ESA) if you are too ill for work as you can't live on nothing. :)

Hi happyclappy,

I agree with wowzers - even if your job is making you depressed, the stress of combining that with your PhD work (especially when you are close to finishing) won't be helping. I don't believe you are obliged to reveal the nature of your illness to your supervisor if you don't want to, but I think I would make them aware that you've been experiencing some health issues if they are affecting your ability to do your PhD work. Of course, a lot of it also depends on your relationship with your supervisor - I have a very good one with mine, and when I went through a period of depression a few years ago I told her about it and she was very understanding.

Either way, I would definitely consider wowzers' advice to be kind to yourself. Does your university provide any kind of bursary or stipend for PhD students who are writing up?

Thank you everybody- I will not say anything. I can honestly say it has not been the PhD- I feel great since I have been signed off work, and am just doing the PhD- but it is the combination of doing both, but probably worse because the job was so awful. Sadly, though, I do need to work, but I might just have to accept that I will flit from job to job whilst writing up . I have previously had problems, before going to University, with jobs where I would get bored within a few weeks, and would physically being to dread going in, before being diagnosed with clinic depression and then having to leave- but I have been fine through University and in positions where there is an element of stress/responsibility- it tends to be jobs without where it starts to go wrong for me.