For stressed-out grad students, mindfulness makes big difference

UW-Madison research has shown that mindfulness training and ongoing mindfulness practice can help students - particularly engineering graduate students - reduce stress, improve focus and derive more enjoyment from their work. Photo by Joel Hallberg - While recent studies and polls indicate the nation is in the midst of a mental health crisis, the situation in academia is even more grim: Within the high-stress, high-pressure, often socially isolated world of advanced education, graduate students experience depression and anxiety at six times the rate of the general population. Normalizing mindfulness practices within the graduate student experience may be an answer, according to a three-year study conducted by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers. Their results showed that regular, sustained mindfulness activities can play an important role in improving engineering graduate student emotional well-being. "Because of the state of graduate student mental health nationally, there's a tangible need for a concrete intervention like this,” says Susan Hagness, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and one of the study's co-authors. "How do we help our students develop resiliency and a really robust toolbox, both professional and personal, to flourish in an environment where there's inevitably going to be stress? We're getting the word out that investing in self-care is important, and it's normal. Cultivated through practices such as meditation, yoga or prayer, mindfulness centers around being in the present moment in an open, non-judgmental, curious, accepting way.