Depression Among College Students and Academic Performance

1. Students who experience a high rate of depression have overall more negative academic performances.

Khurshid, S. (2017, February 27). Effects of depression on students’ academic performance. Academia.edu. Retrieved January 27, 2023, from https://www.academia.edu/29519937/EFFECTS_OF_DEPRESSION_ON_STUDENTS_ACADEMIC_PERFORMANCE

Depression is a common mental disorder that affects people of all ages and backgrounds. It is a leading cause of disability in the United States and worldwide. Among college students, depression has been associated with poorer academic performance (Khurshid, 2017). Depressed students are also more likely to drop out of school and have trouble getting jobs after graduation. Previous research has found that depression can adversely affect various aspects of life, such as workplace performance.

The research was done by Colleges Women of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The result showed that high, medium and low-level depression harmed their academic performance. There was a difference in their academic performance, such as low, medium, and high-level depression. High-level depression harms all aspects of their life. It harms their social life because they dislike talking and communicating with other people. High-level depression also hurts workplace performance because they cannot complete assigned work within the deadline.

The present study highlights that depression is negatively related to academic performance; hence it is necessary to identify early the symptoms of depression and refer the case to the relevant department. If proper control measures are adopted, it is possible to improve students’ academic performance and decrease the dropout rate at the college level, which contributes no doubt to producing a better-educated nation resulting in higher standards of living for all its citizens.

2. Females experience more depression and less successful academic performance.

Stentiford, L., Koutsouris, G., & Allan, A. (2021). Girls, mental health and academic achievement: a qualitative systematic review. Educational Review, 1-31.

In the article, the research shows that more females than males have mental illnesses. Depression is more common in women than men, and the severity of depression is higher in women than in men. Concerning the literature, depression negatively impacted both males’ and females’ academic performance.

Evidence showing that women have more significant instances of depression than men include a study that looked at the prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders in the United States using data from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication and found that while 13.8% of men experience any anxiety disorder, 18.1% of women experience any kind of anxiety disorder; 5.9% percent of men experience generalized anxiety disorder while 8% of the females are affected by this.

3. Males experience less depression and have more successful academic performance.

Kim, Y. K., Sanders, J. E., Makubuya, T., & Yu, M. (2020, October). Risk factors of academic performance: Experiences of school violence, school safety concerns, and depression by gender. In Child & Youth Care Forum (Vol. 49, pp. 725-742). Springer US.

For males as well as females, depression is a risk factor for academic performance.

In this study conducted by Kim et al., it was found that for males as well as females, depression is a risk factor for academic performance. It was found that males were more likely to have more successful mental and physical health outcomes at school than females. In addition, they were less likely to experience school violence and safety concerns. Results of this recent study show that males have been shown to experience less depression and have better grades across the board than their female counterparts. Even in cases where the male students are experiencing some of these problems concerning their grades, they still do not perform worse academically than the female students with issues concerning their mental health.

In their article titled Risk factors of academic performance: Experiences of school violence, school safety concerns, and depression by gender, Kim et al. gathered data from the 2013 and 2014 School Crime Supplement (SUS) to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. This survey includes data for 18-20-year-olds about their school experiences within the past 12 months that can be used to measure student risk behaviors such as physical fights with other students, threats/beliefs of victimization threats in school, witnessing violent acts at school, engaging in bullying and cyberbullying, engaging in alcohol and drug use at school and illegally accessing weapons at school.

A critical finding by Kim et al. is that males are more likely to experience safety concerns, school violence, and depression than females, compared to their peers. However, security concerns at school were more of a risk factor for female students than males with the same level of mental health problems. This trend suggests that females experience more anxiety and stress from school activities than males. In addition, Kim et al. found that male students were less likely to report substance use in schools and less likely to have been victims of violence in schools than females who experienced similar mental health issues.