Chapter 2

Depression can be a hindrance to every aspect of a person’s life,

especially one’s academic performance. According to the Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health (2012), clinical depression is defined
as a mood disorder caused by many factors, including genetic
predisposition, personality, stress, and brain chemistry. A few
common symptoms of depression are changes in appetite and
weight, sleep problems, loss of interest, withdrawal from family and
friends, irritability, fatigue, trouble concentrating, and suicidal
thoughts.
As mental health issues among university students increase, more
research is being conducted to determine how dealing with poor
mental health impacts academic performance. Hysenbegasi, Hass,
and Rowland (2005) conducted a study to determine the
relationship between depression and academic performance. In this
study, there were two groups: the control group, and students with
depression. The control group had no diagnosis of depression, and
no self-report of at least three symptoms of depression while the
students with depression were diagnosed at the on-campus Health
Centre. For the purpose of this study, academic performance was
measured by a student’s GPA. Students completed a survey that
asked them about their employment status, and whether their
mental health impacted their ability to attend class, study, and
complete assignments. The results of this study indicated that a
diagnosis of depression was associated with a lower GPA of 0.49,
which is equivalent to half a letter grade. In addition, depressed
students reported missing more class, tests and assignments
compared to the control group. They also dropped more courses and
missed more social events.
The results of this study have important implications that highlight
the need for better quality mental health support for university
students. However, this study should be taken with a grain of salt.
The data was collected from only one university, therefore the data
might not be representative of the larger population. More research
needs to be done in order to conclude that depression causes poor
academic performance because both are interconnected and
influence each other. It would also be important to identify any
gender and race differences that may exist.
Nevertheless, it’s evident that there needs to be an improvement in
mental services and resources for university students. Easily
accessible mental health services and educating students about the
benefits of seeking interventions may encourage students to seek
help if they need it.

More general symptoms include becoming easily distracted and

working memory deficits; a more specific symptom is self-
handicapping in academia (Frojd et al., 2008). Mental health is
becoming more prevalent with 10% of adolescents affected by a
mental health disorder in their lifetime in 2004; this continued to
increase 19% for those suffering from clinical depression in 2007,
(Department of Health, 2012). A study by DeRoma, Leach and
Leverett (2009) found that 53% of students suffered from
depression of varying severity in comparison to 10% in the public,
(Department of Health, 2012). The finding that students are
experiencing particularly high prevalence of depression is cause for
concern and therefore research is needed to examine the effects it is
having on their lives.
Due to the high prevalence of depression in students, DeRoma et al.,
(2009), it is important to understand how it impairs everyday life to
create interventions to help sufferers live without impairment.
Depression can appear gradually or suddenly with varying reasons
including life events, academic pressures, and lack of social support,
Addis, Truax & Jacobson (1995). The aforementioned symptoms can
have damaging effects in many aspects of sufferer’s lives from social
engagements to academic performance.
Regardless of the severity of deficits, personally tailored
interventions collated with past success could be a crucial stepping
stone to benefit individuals with academic related depression. This
research will focus on academic performance with regard to the
deficits that depression presents, which type of depression is
exhibited and how interventions can subsequently be created from
this research.
Depression has been found to correlate strongly with decreased
academic performance but only in moderate depression, in severe
depression perfectionism is a buffer to damaging effects, (DeRoma
et al., 2009). They found that moderate depression threatens self-
esteem, therefore decreasing belief and leads to self-handicapping in
certain tasks thus negatively affecting academic potential.
This self-defeating perspective owes to a lack of constructively using
negative performance to better overall performance in these
individuals. A limitation of DeRoma et al., (2009) was the measure
of academic performance through self reported Grade Point Average
(GPA). GPA is a snapshot evaluation of how an individual has
performed in one area of academia, thus it is not representative of
their overall performance. Furthermore, a snapshot GPA can be
influenced by many biases such as content, interest or daily mood.
For further research to determine whether depression negatively
affects academic performance a more specific measure must be
used.
Decreased academic performance in depressed patients has also
been found with other measures of academic performance by
Hysenbegasi et al., (2005) as they used both objective and subjective
measures; GPA and thoughts about academic performance. It was
found that subjective measures correlated higher with decreased
academic performance than objective measures, even though they
were both significant. With more accurate reports from subjective
measures, understanding an individual’s own perspective on the
reasons behind their depression will help explain the difference in
effects on academic performance from different individuals.
Therefore, the cause of depression may have a bearing on which
everyday processes affect academic performance so must be
explored further.
In academia there are many traits that would make one the ideal
candidate to do well. Just a few of these include high
conscientiousness, Vianello, Robusto and Anselmi (2010), interest,
Kearns and Fuchs (2013), and paying attention, Fry and Hale
(1996), to ensure remembering the relevant information. Fry and
Hale (1996) control ability in analysis in predictors for academic
performance, working memory is the next important contributor to
academic performance. Researchers (Arsenio & Loria, 2014) looked
into why individuals with depression are affected so badly in
academia and the role of working memory. They discovered that
individuals with depression display “disengaged coping” which
becomes detrimental to academic performance.
However, these researchers did not explain what “disengaged
coping” meant, although previous research may offer more insight
in this recent finding. Gohier et al., (2009) found that individuals
with depression were unable to inhibit neutral information from
accessing their working memory, therefore they could not
differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information. These
researchers proposed that impaired working memory processes
predicted detrimental coping and attentional deficits. As working
memory has been highly correlated in academia, it should be used to
measure deficits in depressed patients and the subsequent effect on
academic performance.