TABLE 4.

Teaching-related factors that PhD students reported negatively affected their depression

Factor	Description	% (n) (N = 43)a	Example quote	Example quote
Increases number of responsibilities/time away from research	Teaching adds to the total number of responsibilities that graduate students have and can interfere with the time that they feel they need to spend on research, which increases stress and can negatively affect student depression.	47 (20)	Student 10: “As a PhD student, you’re expected to publish, do all this research, and then also teach. A little while ago, I was both designing a class and teaching two sections at the same time, and I was spending so much time on that class. It was close to 40 hours per week plus research. I definitely was feeling overwhelmed, and I do think that can affect [my depression], because it leads to burnout.”	Student 12: “Teaching often regularly leaves you with less time to focus on research. So, it is time away from research. And if I’m already feeling like I’m not doing enough, having the extra load of teaching can just amp that feeling up.”
Negative reinforcement from undergraduates	Negative reinforcement from undergraduates, in the form of being rude, disrespectful, or disengaged, or receiving negative scores and comments on teaching evaluations, can negatively affect student depression.	28 (12)	Student 29: “It [is hard for my depression] and really bums me out when [the undergraduates] don’t try. I put a lot into [teaching]. (…) The ones that are just like, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ and roll their eyes, it’s just hard. It’s like, I put so much into making [the content] clear and I’m trying. So, when the students are not really trying, it does not feel great.”	Student 19: I’ve had students straight up tell me, ‘This is the least important class that I have to take this semester. I’m not going to put in much effort.’ And it makes me feel kind of crummy, kind of bad. When at the end of the semester, I get the teaching evaluations saying, ‘I just took this class because I need it or I had to. I didn’t think it added anything to my education.’ I feel very low.”
Personal pressure to teach well	Feeling an obligation to teach undergraduates well or ensure that they understand the course content can induce stress and negatively affect depression.	26 (11)	Student 16: “[My depression related to teaching] all comes back to the stress of having to do a good job for my students. I didn’t want to fail them. So that was difficult and I took [being a teacher] very seriously.”	Student 40: “I think feeling like there were these undergrads depending on me [negatively affected by depression]. (…) If I haven’t sufficiently prepared to lead a discussion section or whatever, there are undergrads whose education will suffer. That added pressure was hard [on my depression] and just being afraid of letting them down.”
Lack of teaching training or guidance	Not having training or guidance about how to teach made students feel insecure about their teaching abilities, which can negatively affect their depression.	16 (7)	Student 25: “[My depression worsened] because I was concerned about the lack of supervision and the lack of support for how to teach. (…) I just felt like I was doing a terrible job, which was really discouraging.”	Student 26: “I didn’t feel like I had enough guidance as to what I should be teaching [the undergraduates in my class] and how to control a classroom, so not having the respect of the students and not knowing how to get it was really stressful.”

^aForty-three out of the 50 students who participated in the study had experience teaching undergraduates either as a TA or as an instructor of record. We only considered the responses from the TAs with teaching experiences when calculating the percent of students who reported each factor.