在教育内卷与文凭通胀的背景下，一些人即便已经通过高考的窄桥，成为同龄人的佼佼者，却依然在持续性竞争的焦灼之中因学业失意陷入了抑郁的境地。按照精神医学范式，精英高校大学生因学业而生的抑郁，通常被归因为一种情绪、心理和认知的“病态”。为了进一步突破这样的一种理解，本研究试图回应如下一些问题：对这些精英高校的大学生而言，学业抑郁究竟意味着什么？是如何发生的？又何以能够走出？

本研究基于社会文化建构取向对抑郁的理解，结合社会与个人关系视野，借助深度访谈、自传社会学及观察的方式，通过呈现和分析10名学业抑郁的985大学生的疾痛体验，探索其学业抑郁的发生过程与机制，以及这一过程中的自我建构，并在此基础上对当下高等教育的结构性困境作出社会学反思。研究发现：

第一，精英高校大学生对学业抑郁的体认和理解，有一个动态发展的过程。前期，通过与以往自我或他人的对比，受访者们可以感受到自己身心状态的“不对劲”，尽管怀疑，但不会确切地将其界定为精神病学意义上的“抑郁”。此时的“不对劲”即为本文所说的“初级抑郁”。当受访者们的“不对劲”不仅为个体所觉知，还被他人所觉察，并经由精神医学意义上的确诊之后，身心的双重丧失就以“疾病实体”的形式被确定下来。此时，就成了本文所说的“次级抑郁”。抑郁的确诊有时能并未使抑郁得到缓解，反而使他/她进入一种被污名化的状态，从而导致自我的瓦解。

第二，对精神病学的“抑郁”概念的关注并不意味着我们需要接纳那样一种对抑郁的个人化的病理学解释。涂尔干对“关系一断即为犯罪”的认识，为我们理解抑郁的发生提供了一种新的视角。研究也认为，在“病”的表象的背后，是个体与身处其中的学业世界的断联。当个体无法弥合现实自我与完美主义的理想自我之间的鸿沟，或无法通过习以为常的谋生化或道德化方式与学业世界建立起联系时，抑郁就此发生。至此，他们被从原有的关系结构中抛出，无法再通过学业表现来确证自我存在的意义，也无法获得来自共同体的关怀，也不再向世界敞开，反而陷入无尽的自责与自我丧失之中。

第三，这种断联的发生根植于文凭通胀的功利性社会大环境，也与大学学业评价体系本身的制度性风险有关，但最终还是关联到自我的结构与“小生境”的特点。因而在受访者们与学业抑郁共存的真实生活之中，可以窥见走出学业抑郁的可能契机。第一重走出的可能性有赖于蕴藏于个体本能之中的复原力。在自我与学业情境的互动中，个体不断进行自我意义生产，学业、自我、学业抑郁及其之间关系也在全新的自我结构生成中被重新理解。第二重走出的契机是“小生境”中社会性支持体系。借由与亲密他人和带有先验的善意的陌生人产生的关系性兜底力量，受访者们可以重新审视自我及身处的社会性情境，回到一个源于自我并指向自我的生活世界，进入情绪和身体状态的回升期。个体摆脱学业抑郁的困境、实现自我的身心整全的第三重可能，则在那样一种人性化的教育生态。

In the context of educational involution and diploma inflation, some people, even though they have passed the narrow bridge of college entrance exams and become the best among their peers, still fall into depression due to academic disappointment amidst the anxiety of continuous competition. According to the psychiatric paradigm, academic depression among elite students is usually attributed to an emotional, psychological, and cognitive "morbid state". To further break through this understanding, this study attempts to answer the following questions: What does academic depression mean for these elite students? How does it occur? And how can it be overcome?

This study is based on the understanding of depression through socio-cultural construction orientation, combined with the perspective of social and personal relationships. Through in-depth interviews, autobiographical sociology, and observation, we present and analyze the pain experiences of 10 985 university students with academic depression, and explore the process and mechanism of their occurrence of academic depression, as well as their self-construction in this process. Based on this, we make sociological reflections on the current structural difficulties of higher education. Research findings:

Firstly, the recognition and understanding of academic depression among elite college students have a dynamic development process. In the first stage, through comparison with their past selves or others, the respondents can feel that their physical and mental states are "abnormal". Although suspected, it would not exactly be defined as "depression" in the psychiatric paradigm. It is what is referred to as "primary depression" in this research. When the sense of abnormal is not only perceived by the individual but also by others and is diagnosed in the psychiatric sense, the dual loss of mind and body is identified as a "disease entity". At this point, it becomes what we call "secondary depression". The diagnosis of depression sometimes does not lead to relief, but rather to a state of stigmatization, which leads to the disintegration of the self.

Secondly, the focus on the psychiatric concept of "depression" does not mean that we need to accept such an individualized pathological interpretation of depression. Émile Durkheim's recognition that "a broken relationship is a crime" provides a new perspective for understanding the onset of depression. The study also argues that behind the appearance of "illness" is a disconnection between the individual and the academic world in which he or she lives. Depression occurs when individuals are unable to bridge the gap between their realistic selves and their perfectionist ideal selves or to connect to the academic world in the way that they are used to earning a living or moralizing. They are then thrown out of their original relational structure, unable to validate the meaning of their existence through academic performance, unable to receive care from the community, and no longer open to the world, but instead, fall into endless self-blame and self-loss.

Thirdly, this disconnection is rooted in the utilitarian social environment of diploma inflation and the institutional risks of the university academic evaluation system itself, but is ultimately related to the structure of the self and the characteristics of the "small habitat". Thus, in the real life of the interviewees living with academic depression, we can see the possible opportunities to get out of academic depression. The first possibility to get out depends on the resilience that is embedded in the individual's instincts. In the interaction between the self and the academic situation, the individual continues to produce meaning for the self, and the academic, self, academic depression, and the relationship among them are reconceptualized in a new self-structure. The second opportunity for emergence is the social support system in the "small habitat". With the power of relational underpinnings with close others and strangers with the transcendental goodwill, respondents can re-examine the self and the social situation they are in, return to a lived world that originates from and points to the self, and enter a period of emotional and physical rejuvenation. The third possibility for the individual to escape from academic depression and to realize the physical and mental integrity of the self is in that kind of humanistic educational ecology.