Cross-Sectional Study of Depression and Suicidality Among College Students in University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Depression as it were having been defined as a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you. The WHO in a fact sheet report has stated that depression is a common mental disorder and one of the main causes of disability worldwide. They added that globally, an estimated 264 million people are affected by depression. In 2020, an estimated 21.0 million adults in the United States had at least one major depressive episode. The pressure to perform well in school against all odds induces elements of depression when the results are not proportional to the efforts put into the study. Hence, this study was done to assess the level depression and suicidality amongst college students in the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: The study was descriptive cross-sectional with a total of 104 students who were recruited conveniently from the College of Health Sciences, University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. The research instrument was a close-ended questionnaire structured in four parts: socio-demography, depression, coping, and suicidality adapted from the Beck-depression-inventory, COPE inventory tool, and Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) tool. The statistical analysis was done using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 23. The descriptive statistics was done using simple descriptive tool, chi square test was used to test for association between variables with the confidence interval 95%, p at 0.05 and power of 80. Results and Discussions: Age group (yrs) was the only significant socio-demographic characteristic that was significantly associated (X2 39.102, P=0.001) with depression status. The depression status of the participants showed that those who had Mild mood disturbance were 5(4.8%), Borderline clinical depression 4(3.8%), Moderate depression 10(9.6%), Severe depression 3(2.9%), and Extreme depression 6(5.8%). The study showed ...