Why not get out? Really

Bolotnyy: We found that these moderate to severe symptoms of depression and anxiety were about two to three times more prevalent among PhD students in these eight top-ranked economics PhD programs than in the general population. Suicidality was also about two times what you’d see in the general population.

And:

Economic students are about half as likely as other Harvard PhD students to be in treatment if they have some of these serious symptoms. That’s something that we’ve talked a lot about and tried to understand.

Here is more, brought to you by the AEA.  I am very happy to see this work being done, kudos to Valentin Bolotnyy.  And I am all for more social connections, better campus mental health counseling, and involved advisors, all of which are listed as potential partial remedies.  Yet if I were the AEA, I would be wondering about pushing yet another recommendation — discouraging some people, at the margin of course, from even starting graduate school in economics?  And other fields too.

Somehow that option does not receive much consideration.  (When I advise people. in part due to this and other data, I am much less likely to recommend graduate school than in earlier times.)  Should not part of the mission of the AEA be to think like an economist?  What about “exit”?  Or is that only for other sectors?