Study Finds College Students Often Deal with Depression in Silence
College students have a lot to handle when embarking on an intense educational experience. Blending depression into the mix can make the transition even more difficult. Now, new research shows that college students dealing with depression are twice as likely as their classmates to drop out of school.
Science Daily recently published a report on this research that also found that lower grade point averages depend upon a student’s type of depression. This type of focus can help to better equip students and treatment providers in addressing depression and its impact.
According to Daniel Eisenberg, assistant professor in the University of Michigan School of Public Health and principal investigator of the study, there are two core symptoms of depression: a loss of interest and please in activities or a depressed mood. Only a loss of interest is associated with lower grade point averages.
“The correlation between depression and academic performance is mainly driven by loss of interest in activities,” Eisenberg said in Science Daily. “This is significant because it means individuals can be very depressed and very functional, depending on which type of depression they have. I think that this can be true for many high achieving people, who may feel down and hopeless but not lose interest in activities.
Eisenberg also noted that there are plenty of students who are suffering from significant depression on some dimension, but are performing just fine. These students can easily be at higher risk as they go unnoticed due to no noticeable drop in functioning and perhaps an unwillingness to seek help.
As Eisenberg pointed out, only about 50 percent of people suffering from depression say they think they need help. College students especially may feel that the stress they are experiencing is normal. At the same time, different people have different levels of stigma and unfair comparisons can be made to other students, putting even more pressure on the individual.
