Prevalence and gender difference in self-reported depressive symptomatology among Nigerian University students: Implication for depression counselling

Abstract

Encounter with depressive symptoms is one of the reasons why university students visit university counselling centres. This study sought to examine the present prevalence of depression among university students as well as gender dissimilarity in self-reported depression. 550 (male-46; female-306) randomly selected students from three private universities in Ogun State, Nigeria completed Kutcher Adolescent Depression Scale. Descriptive (frequency count) and t-test statistics analyses of the two research questions posed to guide the study revealed that self-reported depressive symptoms by the participants ranged from 11.45% to 35.81% for both sexes; 11.48% to 25.82% for males; 11.44 to 23.20% for females. Further analysis showed that self-reported cases of mild depression was more than that of severe depression and difference on gender indicated that overall rate of depression for females (37.30%) was higher than that of males (34.64%). There was no significant difference on gender basis at 0.05 alpha level. The implications of these findings on depression counselling are discussed.

Key words: depression, prevalence, gender, counselling, students, university, Nigeria