Many of us have said that we hope the poster is getting professional help. I don't think deleting or ignoring the post is helpful - I think that would be very distressing in fact. It can be helpful to know that others have been in a similar situation and have come through it. Personally, I think it's very important to know that, and to know that many of us are thinking of the poster and wighing them well.

This happened to me. It may seem unthinkable to actually leave your PhD but I would defeinitely keep that as an option - intermitting may not be enough. I hope you are getting professional help with this. You need to take time to work out what the triggers are that produce such terrible stress that you have these thoughts. That is your priority - everything else can wait. I am doing another PhD now - both funded (left first one after a year and a complete break down). You have much more time than you think - get peace of mind first.

Isn't this just what happens at talks and conferences? Instead of geinuine debate and discussion, it's a contest to prove the speaker wrong and the questioner right. It's a negative side effect of the competitve nature required by many academics and similar minded folk.

I've definitely read this as well. That state education was organised to prepare the masses for the roles they should expect - and private education was to train the leadership. This was not casual, but quite directed. If I have time - I will try and track the references down.

Some of my data has been collected via a website at another institute. Anything I publish using that data will need to be co-authored, or at least, I will run the paper by them and see if they want ao-authorship or acknowledgement (this is the agreement we have).

I think it's very hard when family are unsupportive. You can't just drop them!

That's not as strange as calling 'fish fingers' 'fish sticks'. OK, so fish don't have fingers - but fish sticks is not very appealing is it? And they're grey pasty disgusting things too - not like our beautiful white fingers.

I quite like The Times online blogs myself...

I am pretty sure that if i sent a message to my supervisor in a bottle it would be just as likely to get a response as an email. Maybe I should try it. I'll just open this here bottle of red wine....

Yes it's astonishing I get anything done these days - or maybe I don't...

Must be time to do a load of washing (how desperate is that?).

Now Olivia - I don't want to interfere with your metaphor here but Gilligan's island isn't really well-known over here. Hmmm. My childhood favourites started with Skippy and Flipper and moved on to Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants. Oh and The Tomorrow People.

Actually it feels like that's where I am!

And now I can't get that blasted drippy miserable song out of my head. I even sang it to my daughter at bedtime before getting back to her current favourite - my apalling rendition of Steve Tyler's 'I don't want to close my eyes..'.

The other song I keep thinking of these days is 'It's the final countdown ....'.

My husband disowns my taste in music.

I hope you're talk is early in the conference so that you can totally chill out for the rest of your visit. Kind of spoils it if you're on last.

I guess it depends how you define 'problematic' and i'm not entirely certain as don't know all the details. My impression is, that in most cases the problems are dealt with and a minimum standard is achieved. But it is a big deal to fail a student and there is probably a grey area depending on your examiners. I have seen these problems arise when there has been inadequate supervision - otherwise they are dealt with earlier one way or another. So I would say the underlying problem is inadequate supervision - a subject very dear to my heart...

Well I'm not sure I think it's corrupt Jouri - I think it's inevitable because it's really quite impossible to impose a single standard on all PhDs from all insitutions in all subjects. The system we have does a good job and in general does maintain a minimum standard.