PhD student with mental health issues and bad performance One of my PhD students told me during a supervisory meeting that they have been struggling with anxiety and depression and self-referred to the university psychological support. They asked me not to share with anyone and I didn’t.

Moving forward eight months and their penultimate year, their performance has declined to a degree that they might fail the PhD altogether. I tried to support with regular meetings, breaking tasks, teaming with other students, nothing seems to help pick up the pace.

Normally, at this point, I would set in place a special process: an independent committee is set to review progress regularly and set objectives and I’m only one of the three members. This is the formal process and usually works very well to address the progress issues but also puts more stress on the student because there is a stick at the end: the committee could decide to remove the student from the PhD program.

So, here is my trilemma:


If I go on with the process, I don’t know what this will mean for the student’s health. There might be a note on their record from the psychological services to instigate special treatment, but I’ll not know beforehand.
If I discuss this with the support team in hypothetical terms, it would be very easy to understand which student it is since my group is small and that student is the only one I have in that particular phase of the PhD. This would violate his explicit request.
If I don’t do anything, the certain outcome is that the student will go unprepared to the viva presentation (if they manage to prepare a thesis) and fail.


Anyone has experience how to deal with a situation like this? Any resources?

Update: After laying out the options to the student, they decided to leave the program. It seems this was something they were planning for even before my talk. I am not sure if the plan to leave the program was also a contributing factor to the bad performance or luck of effort.
Be forthright with the student about what they are facing. Explain the various contingencies. They may be unaware or ill-informed. You could ask them which path they would prefer you to take... True, they may not be the best judges of their own best interests, or may not be able to act, but you can ask.

In particular, probably you indeed should not share information that you'd promised to keep confidential, short of issues like potential self-harm or harm-to-others. At the same time, it may be that your university has fairly strong guidelines about your supposed responsibilities in a situation like this. At least try to read up on them... whether or not you think it is humane or wise to comply. I suggest that you keep in mind that the university will be "covering itself" legally, first of all, with concern for students and faculty somewhat subordinate... so it is non-trivial to see what the truly best action will be.

In any case, I think it would be good to avoid allowing a disastrous thesis defense to occur, especially if there is no room for a second attempt (as at my own university). Being late but doing ok is vastly preferable to being on time and catastrophically failing...

No, I do not mean to suggest that laying this out for the student will magically transform them... but that it is fair to inform them of consequences of this and that, and ask them what route they'd want you to take.

And, by the way, is "removal from the program" merely (!?!) loss of funding? In my university, it is possible to continue to register (after everything but thesis and defense are done) without cost... and, thus, without necessarily having financial support from the program.