Depression and examination failure among students of tertiary institution in cross river state, nigeria: implication for counselling

Abstract

This study examined the depression and examination failure among students of tertiary institution in Cross River State, Nigeria and its counselling implication. Descriptive research survey was adopted for the study. The population of the study was all the students both male and female in all the major tertiary institution in Cross River State, Nigeria. A total of 1,000 students between the ages of 15 – 20 years were selected using multistage sampling technique. A self-designed questionnaire title Depression Evaluation Scale (DES) was used to elicit information from respondents. The instrument was validated and reliability was obtained using test-re-test method. The reliability co-efficient was 0.75 at 0.05 level of significance. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive analysis for the general questions raised while t-test was used to test the hypothesis raised at 0.05 level of significance. The result showed that there is significant difference between male and female students with depression. It was also revealed that there was a significant relationship of depression and mass failure among male students than female counterpart. Based on the findings, it is concluded that depression is a health and behavioural challenge among students in tertiary institution, it was recommended that school counsellors should design an effective counselling programme to assist the students with depression in our tertiary institutions across the globe.