Effects of Depression and Anxiety on Student’s Academic

Effects of Depression and Anxiety on Student’s Academic Performance

Name:

Professor:

Date:

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction3

Rationale5

Chapter 26

Literature Review6

Chapter 314

Methodology………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….14

Chapter 1

Introduction

Stress which often leads to anxiety or depression is a widespread issue facing individuals all over the world today. Individuals often experience anxiety in one or the other time. According to Folkman and Lazarus, stress is defined as an internal state, which is caused either by the social situations, physical demands of the body or the environmental circumstances that are either uncontrollable, potentially harmful, or exceeding an individual’s resources for coping CITATION And10 l 1033 (Baum & Contrada, 2010). Another scholar, David Fontana described stress as a demand, which results from the adaptive capacities of the body or mind CITATION Pet13 l 1033 (Fleming, 2013). From the definitions it is evident that stress is caused by conditions affecting an individual, those that they cannot meet either physically or psychologically, resulting in breaking down. However, even though the pressure is only viewed in negative terms, it can also positively manifest itself. Stress can be termed as useful in an instance where it offers an individual with an opportunity to improve themselves or gain something. The Greek term Eustress is used in defining positive stress CITATION Ale05 l 1033 (Antoniou & Cooper, 2005). Positive stress acts as a motivator. An absence of the positive stressors leads to an individual lacking the necessary spirit to perform.

Depression and anxiety are two common mental health issues that affect teens and young adults. Anxiety and depression affects the social life and class performance of students. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) every one out of eight children or teenagers is affected with anxiety and depression (Andrews, 2004). As much as there is treatment for anxiety and depression disorders many children are not receiving treatment. Lack of treatment of anxiety and depression has tremendous effects in the lives of students. Failure to diagnose anxiety and depression in students negatively impacts and slows down their ability to learn and this hinders them from enjoying their time in school. When anxiety and depression is undiagnosed in students it puts their mental health at risk which. This leads to social and behavioral problems such as poor performance, difficulty in learning, low self-esteem, neglected hygiene and poor self-care. Anxiety and depression have different signs and symptoms in different people. This makes it difficult for teachers to identify when a student is suffering from the disorder. When the effects of anxiety and depression are not addressed early enough, it creates a vicious cycle that traps many students.

Students just like adults are likely to undergo depression as well as anxiety. Students are often transitioning to a period of adulthood that is characterized by various challenges and without the support or without having a strong support system then a student may go into depression. According to a survey that was conducted by the WHO it is approximated that more than 300 million people suffer from depression. Students in colleges are among those that have been affected by depression and there are many pre-disposing factors that have contributed to this including new environment as most go to college that is far away from home, exposure to culture, loneliness as they have left their parents and friends, appetite change. Depression is likely to result in insomnia, withdrawing from participating in various activities, lack of appetite, unhappiness, sleeping too much, hopelessness, may develop a feeling of sadness. This may result in their ability to concentrate in school which in turn may affect their overall performance. Researchers have proved that generalized anxiety as well as depression may affect the day to day activities of the students causing anthem to pull away or rather stay away from people and eventually they are unable to continue with their day to day activities.

Rationale

There has been numerous research that have been conducted between the relationship between students’ performance and occurrence of depression or anxiety. There are researchers who have asserted that poor performance leads to depression while other have argued that depression leads to poor performance. This paper looks at how depression occurs in students and how it affects their academic performance. It sorts to give insights on what coping mechanism are used by some individuals so that they are not affected by depression. The goal is to bring awareness on the link between mental health well-being and academic performance.

Chapter 2

Literature review

Just like other disorders, anxiety disorder has received its fair share of the research, and some of the above methods highly contributed to what is currently known about this disorder and its modes of treatment. Freud is one individual whose works have been used to establish an understanding of anxiety. Freud at first attributed anxiety to the accumulation of libido as he had observed abstinence from sex would lead to anxiety. Later Freud came up with a theory that rising instinctual impulses my result in traumatic experience in a child which may lead to traumatic experience. Signal anxiety was said to be triggered by traumatic experiences. In another study by Cohen in 1988-1990, it was revealed that anxiety disorder was brought about by alcohol abuse and dependence of benzodiazepine. In these patient’s anxiety disorders increased during the withdrawal period. Neuroimaging has also been used in the study of anxiety. Classical fear conditioning was among the first paradigms to be used in study of the neuroanatomical of anxiety in humans. In a study by Buchel et al., neutral faces were conditioned with a loud tone that was quite unpleasant (Buchel, 2015). It was observed that conditioned stimulus resulted in brain activity in the cingulate cortex, amygdala, and anterior insula. These studied indicated the “fear network” found to be activated in a patient with anxiety disorder during the manifestation of the symptom. The frequency of the disorder occurring is what characterizes it to be a disorder. Individuals with anxiety disorders experienced periods of fear and phobia more often than normal people that it disrupted their lives. Research of other factors such as if they can commit suicide (fatal) or can cause self-harm such as mutilation have been conducted and these factors have been closely linked with to individuals with a mental disorder. (Curtis, 2016)

There have been prominent perspectives that have been used to study and treat mental health (Kessler, 2003). It is from these perspectives that mental disorders have been classified and each has its form of treatment. There are several schools of thoughts that have emerged through the development of psychology that has shaped how doctors investigate human behavior. For example, certain psychological problems may be attributed to genetics a biological factor while others may be attributed to childhood experiences. Anxiety disorders have often been associating with personal experience and at times genes. Psychodynamic perspective tries to explain the dynamic relationship between the unconscious and conscious motivation.

According to Walter Cannon, the theorist behind the emergency theory, emotions in response to a stressful situation, often occur even in the absence of the bodily changes CITATION Ken18 l 1033 (Cherry, 2018). Cannon proceeded to argue that, the internal physiologic or visceral reactions of a person’s body is recognized slowly by the brain, compared to the way a person’s mind releases emotional response. Cannon proved his theory with the help of decorticated cats. When the decorticated cats were faced with stressful situations, they exhibited emotional behaviors, which showed that the cats felt rage and aggression. The cats later manifested the emotions through bodily changes, which included baring of teeth, erect and growling hair. Philip Bard also enhanced Cannon’s theory and argued that the thalamus, which is the lower brain structure, was essential in the production of the emotional responses. Philip Bard stated that emotional reactions were the first to be released, signals were then sent by the thalamus to the brain for interpretation. The brain also sends messages to the sympathetic nervous system, for the SNS to initiate the physiological response.

Some researchers have suggested that increased social media use predisposes young adults to anxiety while others think it is the depression that occurs first leading to increased use of social media. According to research by Jean Twenge and other researchers on increase in depressive symptoms and its link to media screen, they found that increase in depression and suicide rates had increased significantly among teenagers. Their study focused on what has changed between years’ ad what was common among the children suffering from depression. After a series of surveys and research, they discovered that the changes might be traced back to their teenage years and their immediate use of a smartphone (Twenge et al. 2018). According to research by Pew center, by 2012 phone ownership crossed 50% threshold at just the same time often depression increased. By 2015 phone ownership had risen to 73%. Sadly, it’s not only teenagers who are affected, but we have adults who fall in this bracket too. We can all agree that owning a smartphone does not mean getting into depression. It is therefore imperative to understand practices that lead to depression and how digital devices and technology predisposes us to depression.

A research by Journal of Cyberpsychology also gives insight as to why more students are likely to suffer from high depression rates and anxiety. According to research by Journal of Cyberpsychology and students often feel depressed as we are always comparing our lives to those of other people (Valkenburg, 2006). Nowadays people post everything about their lives on social media.log in, and you will know where they are having their vacation, the car they recently acquired, the job promotion they got and the gifts they got from their loved ones. It is through Instagram that you get to learn about power couples who become goals because of the life they are living. Some people will log into social media sites to look at these people living the life they have always dreamt of. The self-comparison and self-pity kicks in and one starts to wonder why they cannot live such a life resulting in low self -esteem. One will wonder why they are 28 and unemployed yet another person is only 19 and has a very well-paying job. Once the obsession begins it, I difficult to stop it, and it is the onset of how depression kicks in. Most teenagers do not understand that the life on social media may not be the actual life these people are living, but they are posting to get followers or portray how “happy” they are.

In an article published in the guardian titled “The way Universities are run is making us ill” explores the mental health crisis of students. The article is keen to point out that when students are joining the university the adjustment from home setting to school setting may be difficult for some. The article gives an example of Brunel University on how the number of mental issues have increased and students now are experiencing mental breakdown, anxiety and depression (Shackle, 2019). The increase in number of students suffering from depression has also portrayed an increase in number of students dropping out as well as increase in suicide or suicide attempt cases. This shows that there is a problem in the university that needs to be addressed in order to determine why the students who are suffering from depression is increasing day by day. Among the stressors pointed out in the article includes essay deadlines, test pressures, juggling between school and work. Most students have also noted the lack of counselling services in the school for students who may suffer from depression.

Depression among students is often brought about by different reasons and mostly students in universities suffer from depression due to pressure to balance between school work and working. Universities in the United States are quite expensive and in order to go through school successfully one may be required to take up side jobs in order to raise an extra income. Juggling between school and work may be difficult as at times the schedules may collide. This may lead to pressure build up among the students and when they are unable to cope with the pressure they may eventually end up suffering from depression. Most Universities students when subjected to pressure may not cope as at times they lack a support system to guide them through which more often is the parents. When pressure becomes too much, students may be faced with the dilemma of either dropping out of school or at times taking gap years in order to have a period that they are able to sit down and reflect about their life and the direction they would take. Homework load also often contributes to the buildup of the pressure. Often you will find universities students unable to find time to do their assignments and they thus pay people money so that they can take the assignments for them. This is not beneficial for the students as they may not get the concept that they would have gotten if they did the assignment by themselves.

According to Summers, depression has an effect on the hippocampal part of the brain that is responsible for learning. Depression and anxiety affects the performance of students at schools. This is because depression and anxiety affects every area of an individual from diet to sleep, self-esteem, social interaction and physical health. When these areas are affected, it becomes hard for a student to perform well in class. Anxiety and depression causes lack of concentration in class, poor relationship with teachers and other students, disinterest in class and school activities. These mental disorders basically cripple the life of an individual. Many students who suffer from depression and anxiety are often in isolation and tend to resist any school related activity. Anxiety and depression also affects memory (Sumer, 2008). These disorders tend to damage the hippocampus which is the part of the brain that is responsible for storage of short term memory. This makes it impossible for a student to store new information and to recall anything taught in class. Children who suffer from anxiety and depression are likely to have a decline in their academic performance.

Anxiety and depression have negative influence on the academic progress of students and results in underachievement. Students who suffer from these disorders are often slow in everything. Anxiety and depression affect the IQ of students. They tend to perform poorly in IQ tests compared to their peers who are normal. Inconsistent academic results are also an effect of anxiety and depression. When a student produces incredible results in one test and performs poorly in another test, this could be a sure sign that the student could be suffering from depression and anxiety. Inconsistent performance makes students to suffer from frustration. Teachers are also confused on what to do and most end up taking disciplinary action against the student. This is why it is important to train teachers to know the signs of anxiety and depression in students and how to approach students who suffer from these mental disorders.

There is often a stigma that is associated with children that suffer from anxiety and depression. It is sad that even in this day and age a teacher may be unable to tell if a student is suffering from depression or anxiety and may just dismiss them to being ignorant or rebellious. Unpredictable behavior is one of the many effects of depression and anxiety. Students who display queer and weird behaviors are often victims of anxiety and depression. It is important to train teachers to recognize student behaviors which are caused by anxiety and depression. A good example of such a behavior is when a student is calm one minute and the next minute the student is shouting or screaming how much they hate school or a particular teacher. This is one of the most common behaviors displayed by students with anxiety and depression. Teachers need to be trained to handle these unexpected behaviors. They should not shun this students making them feel what they are going through is their problem as it is likely to make them pull away even the more.

Shumala in her research also assets Summer arguments on students’ performance. In a research conducted by Shumala et al when a student has no healthy mental well-being, they are less likely to succeed in their academics. Their performance is affected because they can no longer fully concentrate in class. Their mind is occupied with something else instead of being alert in class their mind is somewhere else. At times thy fail to come to class or attend classes as they are locked in their room. According to Shumala’s research, students who had developed depression in the course of their study stopped performing well. Most had stopped attending their classes and participating in class leading to a decline in their performance. The research established that depression had an effect on behavior. Females were found to be more anxious and depressed than their male counterparts.

Missing class is an effect of depression and anxiety (Inam, 2003). When a student is no longer interested in school it is a clear sign that the student could be suffering from anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression also causes lack of interest in activities that a student was once interested in. You find that a student who is very good at baseball or swimming and who never used to miss practice suddenly loses interest in going for practice or being with other team mates. If this is the case and the issue is not detected early the student will start to go home early, miss classes anyhow and in extreme cases drop out of school.

Anxiety and depression are just like any other disorders and is not a matter of self-diagnosis in order to establish if one has anxiety or depression, it often involves scientific research. There is a DSM-V test that needs to be taken. The DSM used for anxiety and depression include having a depressed mood for the entire day, diminished interest for example one is not willing to attend classes or participate in games if they were active in games. Weight loss from dieting or avoidance to eat or increased appetite as a way of dealing with depression. One may also feel they are worthless and have feelings of guilt. Some students may have suicidal thoughts or self-harm thoughts including cutting themselves in order to feel alive. Some of the scientific research methods that have been used include Archival Research and Case study; psychological research will often begin with a case study or looking over past researcher by experts in the field. Most of the disorders we currently have are likely to have had some experimentation. By going through past research, they can establish next cause of action as they begin renewed research (Curtis, 2016). The study of previous research enables them to gather how the disorder responds pharmaceutically and pharmaceutically. Another method would be conducting survey observation and an interview then coming up with a report or psychological research methods such as neuroimaging have also played a significant role.

In a research conducted by Shumala et al when a student has no healthy mental well-being, they are less likely to succeed in their academics. Their performance is affected because they can no longer fully concentrate in class. Their mind is occupied with something else instead of being alert in class their mind is somewhere else. At times thy fail to come to class or attend classes as they are locked in their room. According to Shumala’s research, students who had developed depression in the course of their study stopped performing well. Most had stopped attending their classes and participating in class leading to a decline in their performance. The research established that depression had an effect on behavior. Females were found to be more anxious and depressed than their male counterparts.

There are several ways that psychologist have come up with on how one can deal with stress. Hans Selye may have been the first psychologist to device a way in which one can cope with stress. In 1936 he introduced General Adaptation Syndrome in which he described a three-stage process in how our bodies react due to stress. This response was made on the fact that our bodies often try to maintain homeostasis when they keep being exposed to stressors. He came up with the word “stress” which meant a pleasant event. According to Selye body could experience stress due to unpleasant events and coined the term distress to refer to stress that occur due to an unpleasant event. He then used the term stressor to define the factors that results to stress. His definitions are actually what have been embraced by most psychologists today (McEwan, 2005).

Hans Selye stated that the stressor led to a disruption of both the psychological and the physical state. This in turn led to several psychological responses. Dr. Selye model indicated that the stressors had effects to several parts of the body. The general adaptation syndrome stages entail alarm reaction, stage resistance as well as exhaustion. Alarm reaction involves the process by which the body is able to identify a stressor thus activating an HPA axis. The HPA axis consist of feedback interactions among the hypothalamus, adrenal and pituitary gland. The HPA system produces a flight-or-fight response. This basically is often when we are in dangerous situations. The body gets to release hormones such as Corticotrophin hormone and corticoids helping the body to be able to deal with the threat. At this point the body experiences things such as increases heart rate, dilation of pupil, high blood pressure, increase muscle tension and so much more. After the alarm stage there is the stage of resistance where the body tries and adapts to the stressful situations. Body tries to perceive the threat with calmness, this helps the body attain its internal balance by reducing the endocrine activity. During this period the body produces hormones such as glucocorticoids. This phase however should not continue for an extended period as it may lead to fatigue e irritability as well as lethargy (Szabo, 2012).

Chapter 3

Methodology

There were three main research hypothesis that were tested:

Hypothesis 1: There is negative effect of depression on student’s academic performance

Hypothesis 2: There exists a significance difference between the students who experienced either high, low or medium form of depression

Hypothesis 3: When students started suffering from depression, their academic performance dropped.

Participants

In conducting the research, the participants were selected from students attending any University. There were 70 students who were selected for this study 30 being male and 40 being female who were all freshmen students between 18 and 19 years of age. The participants were selected from stratified random sampling method from 1100 fulltime freshmen students. The participants understood what was required of them. The research did not harm the students in anyway and adhered to the ethics on research. All students who had been selected understood that the research was voluntary and information provided needed to be accurate for the purpose of the research

Materials

First there was informed consent where students had to read and sign meaning that they fully understood all aspects of the study as well as their rights during the study. There was a survey on depression administered, the Depression Screening Test by Ivan Goldberg. The questionnaire was made up of 15 items and each scored on a five-point scale which ranged from one (strongly disagree) and five (strongly agree). In order to have insight on the students’ performance there was an academic performance rating scale that was filled out by teachers on how the students performed. The teacher’s response was between 1 (never or poor) to 5 (very often or excellent) scale. There was a weekly mood survey which was made up of 20 questions. These survey was part of determining if one suffered from anxiety or depression or what was likely to determine if the student was suffering from depression.

Procedures

The research methodology was non-experimental as well as longitudinal as it studied o the relationship between depression and performance of students. Variables in the study included depression while the independent variable was whether a student had good grades before suffering from the depression, grades was considered as the dependent variable. The individuals who participated were asked to sign the consent form before they could take part in the survey. The participants were also required to present a phone number and an email address which they will use as an aces to the survey, most research questions will be sent via the email.

After students were done filling out the depression survey, they were also required to take a personality survey in order to establish if there was a difference between the students who performed well in school and those who did not and had suffered from depression. This personality test used a Likert scale. The aim of the study was to determine what effect depression had on the academic performance. Aside from interviews documentary analysis was also done. In order to get credible articles, it was important to look at article that were peer reviewed. The article was obtained from databases such as Pub Med, PsycINFO, ProQuest and Medline. Key words that were used in the search included depression, anxiety, effect of depression on students’ performance, GPA and mental health being. Literature was conducted to determine which documents appeared more important than others. Qualitative analysis was also used in analysis of the documents that had been selected. The results that were obtained were then summarized through calculation of the average score. Chi-square was also used in order to establish the effects depression had on the academic performance of the students. T test on the other hand was applied and it established the significance difference that existed between the academic performance especially on students with high depression and anxiety rates.

Research design

This study will be done using correlation research method. Correlation method is used in assessing the degree to which two variables are related. The variables in my research will be categorized on students with anxiety and depression as well as those without and effects on the students. These variables should not be manipulated as it may result in getting false information.

Alpha Level

Result obtained will be analyzed at 0.05 alpha level. This is will determine how far

Degrees of freedom

The total number of participant in the research will be seventy people. Thirty-five individuals considered to have anxiety and depression and thirty-five individuals considered to not have any mental disorders. Degree of freedom = n-1 Thus my degree of freedom will be 35-1=34. have two groups, there will be sixty-eight degrees of freedom.

References

Antoniou, A.-S. G., & Cooper, C. L. (2005). Research Companion to Organizational Health Psychology. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Andrews, Bernice, and John M. Wilding. (2004) “The relation of depression and anxiety to life‐stress and achievement in students.” British journal of psychology 95.4: 509-521.

Baum, A., & Contrada, R. (2010). The Handbook of Stress Science: Biology, Psychology, and Health. Springer Publishing Company.

Curtis, D.A & Kelley. 2016. Abnormal Psychology: Myths of “crazy”. Dubuque, IA. Kendall Hunt

Cherry, K. (2018, May 18). Understanding the Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion. Retrieved from Very Well Mind.

Fetsch, R. J. (2016). Stress Symptoms. NDSU Extension Service.

Inam, S. N. B., A. Saqib, and E. Alam. (2003). “Prevalence of anxiety and depression among medical students of private university.” Journal-Pakistan Medical Association 53.2: 44-46.

Jamaludin, N. L., et al. (2018). “The influence of perceived discrimination, orientation to mainstream culture and life satisfaction on destination loyalty intentions: the case of international students.” Current Issues in Tourism 21.8: 934-949.

McEwen, Bruce S. (2005) “Stressed or stressed out: what is the difference?” Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience 30.5: 315.

Perna, Laura W. (2012). Understanding the Working College Student: New Research and Its Implications for Policy and Practice. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Ross, S. E., Niebling, B. C., & Heckert, T. M. (1999). Sources of stress among college students. Social psychology, 61(5), 841-846.

Shackle, S. (2019, September 27). ‘The way universities are run is making us ill’: inside the student mental health crisis. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/27/anxiety-mental-breakdowns-depression-uk-students.

Sümer, Seda, Senel Poyrazli, and Kamini Grahame. (2008). “Predictors of depression and anxiety among international students.” Journal of Counseling & Development 86.4: 429-437.

Szabo, Sandor, Yvette Tache, and Arpad Somogyi. (2012) “The legacy of Hans Selye and the origins of stress research: a retrospective 75 years after his landmark brief “letter” to the editor# of nature.” Stress 15.5: 472-478.

Twenge, Jean M., et al. (2018) “Increases in depressive symptoms, suicide-related outcomes, and suicide rates among US adolescents after 2010 and links to increased new media screen time.” Clinical Psychological Science 6.1: 3-17.

Valkenburg, Patti M., Jochen Peter, and Alexander P. Schouten. (2006) “Friend networking sites and their relationship to adolescents’ well-being and social self-esteem.” Cyberpsychology & Behavior 9.5: 584-590.