I wonder a bit about the possibility of ADD here. My partner has ADHD and does many of the same things you describe.
She spends a good bit of time on (seemingly excessive) organization and planning in order to keep herself from forgetting important things she has to do.
Like your husband, she conflates/confuses words and cannot commit to events.
No idea if this is true in your husband’s situation with his practicum, but my partner has wrestled with formal schooling/education because she relies on shortcuts and gets frustrated with too many requirements.
I agree with others that a certain amount of forgetfulness and stress is normal in post-grad programs, and it is more panic-inducing once you are getting into the thesis/dissertation/practicum stage. I finished my master’s a couple years ago and never could remember “life skill” things while I was in the middle of papers and projects.
Thanks guys. It’s comforting knowing that others have gone through this, either as grad students or as people with learning difficulties. I will share this thread with him and hopefully it will help him get a better handle on his own situation.
Not an expert, but an aside: some of the recent things you’re mentioning could be outward signs of depression from somebody who’s good at hiding it. I say this because it was the case with myself when I suffered a depressive episode about five months ago.
I lost a lot of my cognitive function, had a hard time remembering things, and was failing at tasks I felt I should have excelled at.
And, yeah, grad school definitely has a rep for exacerbating. My only advice is to make sure your social life isn’t dying off – get out of the house and experience life occasionally. It helps break the funk.
Not saying it’s not worth looking into LDs, but I know from experience that some of those symptoms can be temporary. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was diagnosable with ADD, actually – and several of your husband’s ongoing symptoms are things I’ve experienced. I’ve never been tested because, well, I’m smart and generally capable.
Also, I find this thread fascinating given that I’m trying to start pursuing a clinical psych phD in the next year or so, and the OP’s husband sounds a lot like me. It’s like reading a post from my wife from the future.
Nonclinical WAG: It could also be a personality disorder, or a form of high-functioning autism. Getting him tested MIGHT be helpful, but it looks like he has achieved quite a bit and I question if he really has a “problem” that needs to be treated, as opposed to a “quirk” that is not pathological.
It’s a grind, that’s for sure. Make sure your wife from the future is incredibly supportive and has a lot of stuff to keep herself busy! It was rough with us both being in grad school, but ultimately it’s probably for the best - most of the time I’m just as busy as he is.
As for depression, he thought he might have depression too. So a while ago he administered the Beck Depression Inventory to himself. His score was on the low end of ‘‘mild depression.’’ Recently I made him start running again, and that seems to have helped with a lot of his stress. I suffer from pretty severe depression from time to time, so it’s definitely something we’d notice if it was getting out of hand. In a household with a psychologist and a social worker, emerging mental health problems are pretty much cornered and exterminated.
A learning disability will allow him to place the blame for his failures somewhere else. Since he made it into the upper echelon of academic achievement, I’m guessing that he’s not used to academic failure and hasn’t developed a healthy way of dealing with it.
Here are my few thoughts on the subject. This is mostly based on my experience as a law student:
His supervisor doesn’t know how to teach students. It’s possible that what he’s having trouble with, the supervisor doesn’t know how to teach. Rather than developing new teaching strategies for his problem, it’s easier for the Supervisor to just blame his lack of intelligence. This strategy probably works for the Supervisor because Ph.D. students are good at learning on their own, and most will figure out ways to deal with their problems after receiving criticism.
He can’t tell which details are important enough to focus on. It might not be a memory issue at all. When I started learning law, I thought the professors were insane because it seemed like they wanted me to remember every inconsequential fact from a case. I later learned that there was a logic as to what facts they focused on. Once I learned to distinguish relevant facts from the irrelevant ones, I found the memory load a lot more manageable.
As a side question, doesn’t he take notes during his meetings with patients? The only time I had to memorize anything in law school was for closed book exams. When I’ve met with clients, I always wrote down important details that were easy to forget and referred to my notes when talking to supervisors or judges. What is it that he has to memorize without taking notes?
Suggesting that a Ph.D. student has a learning disorder because he can’t keep up with other Ph.D. students sounds like some psychologist needs to get her head out of her ass. She could turn out to be very right, but her logic doesn’t sound like she put too much thought into her opinion.
To help your husband deal with the stress of failure, I would remind him that you’ll love him even if he doesn’t get his Ph.D.* I know this might seem obvious to you, but he might be thinking that you’re only attracted to his sexy brain, and that you (and everyone else) will think less of him if he doesn’t preform well academically.
Otherwise, don’t sweat it. This happens to a lot of graduate level students. He’ll stress out about it for a while, but then he’ll pull through, because you don’t become a Ph.D. student by being a pussy.
*If you do only love him for his academic achievement, then you should lie to him.
