Lyndsey Middleton

Part-time PhD Student, Edinburgh Napier University

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Developmental Psychopathology

On fighting demons for my PhD

I have been unsurprisingly a little under the weather quite recently, and this has been brought on by working too hard! After three hectic months of working and being busy, I finally had to stop. I knew I needed to rest not only because I could not focus on what I was doing, but also because I was feeling very run down and tired. So I took a break. And that’s where it all started! 

Writing the dreaded findings chapters of my PhD thesis

When I returned from my internship at the Scottish government, my main task was to complete the three findings chapters of my thesis. I drafted these in a decent time, and finally gave my supervisors a draft. I hoped that I would get some good feedback, be able to edit the chapters, and then that would be it. Oh how wrong I was!

The part of the PhD journey that no one talks about

Mental health is, unfortunately, a ‘taboo’ topic within the research sphere. Quite often, you find that people don’t talk about this at all. Students don’t talk about it with their supervisors, with each other, and many times, they don’t even admit it to themselves if they feel that something is not quite right. I think this is a really important topic and I'd like to share my views on it here.