There is an ongoing discussion regarding the mental well being of researchers and the question if and how the current academic system is fostering or limiting it. As N2 network we are standing up for the interests of 16,000 doctoral researchers in the Leibniz- and Helmholtz Associations, the Max Planck Society and the IPP Mainz. To evaluate their situation we are conducting harmonized surveys every two years. In the 2019 survey, roughly 5,000 doctoral researchers from these non-university research organizations participated and answered, among others, questions about their mental health.Using this data, we identified levels of depression symptoms that are almost twice as high as among the general population of the same age group in Germany. Correlated with other aspects of the PhD life, we see three main areas that are closely associated with the mental well-being of our early career researchers: workload, supervision, work environment and work atmosphere. In this contribution I would like to present our results in more detail and connect them with possible areas of improvement.