This study explores how identity nonverification affects the mental health of graduate students with multiple marginalized identities. Grounded in identity theory, it demonstrates that reflected appraisals—the feedback from others—are situated within varying levels of the social structure (proximate, intermediate, and large), contributing to identity nonverification and mental health conditions. Using qualitative methods, including interviews, a Photovoice activity, and a confirmatory focus group, the research focuses on low-income graduate students’ experiences during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings reveal that students frequently encounter nonverification of their role identity as graduate students at multiple levels of the higher education system: proximate (enacted by peers and advisors), intermediate (program design), and large (institutional norms and practices). These intersecting levels of identity nonverification reinforce feelings of exclusion and marginalization. The study emphasizes the simultaneous impact of identity nonverification and its role in exacerbating mental health risks for graduate students, particularly by increasing their vulnerability to develop context-driven mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation. The findings underscore the need to address structurally embedded processes of nonverification to reduce mental health disparities in higher education, particularly those among students with multiple marginalized identities.