1. Introduction
Challenges faced by doctoral researchers led to a concerning “doctoral mental health crisis” within academia. Recognizing the pressing need to address mental health concerns, notably among doctoral students, the Quebec Ministry of Higher Education introduced the Higher Education Student Mental Health Action Plan 2021–2026. One potentially relevant intervention approach is the implementation of tailored structured writing retreats for graduate students. Aiming to measure and explain the effects of participating to a three-day writing retreat on doctoral mental health, this study followed an explanatory sequential mixed method, including an experimental design. One hundred doctoral researchers were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (In recent years, there was a growing recognition of the challenges faced by doctoral researchers, as their professional identity transforms from student to researcher [In Quebec, a Canadian province with numerous universities, the situation is similar. A large-scale survey by the Quebec Student Union (2019) [