I am currently in the third year of my PhD and I have been suffering from depression for a pretty long time now. I finally decided I needed professional help and I have been diagnosed with severe depression.

Here is the back story:
At the end of my first year I spoke to the postgrad director for my department, I thought it would be easier to talk to another woman, and that she might understand. I explained to her that I was really struggling and very unhappy. I got absolutely nothing from her. Talking to her was so difficult because she was really not concerned even though I was pouring my heart out, and it took so much out of me that for the next few days I was a zombie.

About a year after this I felt even worse, so I decided to talk to my supervisor. He was really 'concerned' and went off to get advice from the Head Dept and the same post grad director I had talked to the year previously. The Dept Head arranged to talk to me, said he understood how I felt, but to hang in there. That was it.

Prior to talking to my supervisor about how I was feeling, he was really good to me, very supportive and showed a lot of interest in my work and we had meetings every fortnight. It has been about 10 months since that conversation and I have only had three meetings with him since, he shows no interest and even brought up in the last meeting just before xmas that he has been 'neglecting' me.

I feel that he lost interest in me and my work once I told him I was finding it difficult to cope. It cannot be a coincidence that after that point he was suddenly too busy to supervise me, and no longer found my work interesting.

So now, ten months later, I am at an all time low. Having a counsellor actually say 'you are severely depressed' has really struck me hard. Given the current relationship with my supervisor I have no idea how to approach this, or even if I should say anything at all. I am not doing a great deal of work only about an hour or two a day, and so progress is very slow, but because my supervisor is so uninvolved he does not realise.

Has anyone had a similar experience to this? Or any advice on how I could have these people take my mental health seriously?

I would imagine that your sup is actually trying to be supportive by not pressuring you with deadlines. He's doing what any other boss would do in a normal organisation - stepping back and allowing you some time. Don't think of it as 'neglecting'.

I'd have a chat with him and ask him for some goals to get you back on track.

Either that or ask to take a gap year or something to recover.

Hey Sandian. Sorry to hear that you're having a rubbish time. I have bipolar disorder and although I've now successfully finished my studies, I had to drop out of university several times and re-start due to severe episodes of depression and long hospitalisations for this. My university were generally very good through all of this, but maybe I was just lucky- I was doing my PhD in a psychology department after all. I think the first thing you need to do is to get sufficient help and support and get yourself feeling better, and maybe just not focus on the PhD until you are feeling up to it. It's very difficult to be productive when you feel so awful. Glad to hear that you're seeing a counsellor, but are you getting medical help as well? There are a million different medications that might help- even if you're not keen on taking medications it might be worth a shot. Hope you get something sorted, KB