Student exams are an integral part of the education system. Their purpose is to assess knowledge after study, evaluate academic progress, and prepare students for future challenges by ensuring that students learn comprehensively and effectively. However, regardless of its intended purpose, every exam, no matter what it is, becomes a major source of emotional stress which is directly linked to mental state.
During exam time, students have reported experienced anxiety, frustration, fatigue, and many symptoms of depression. Some degree of stress is natural and necessary in normal life, which also enhances a person’s performance, but when there is excessive pressure, the same stress has a negative impact on mental health, which becomes the main cause of depression.
Exam depression is not limited to exam fear alone, but involves reciprocal and complex interactions between psychological, social, biological, and environmental factors. Understanding the causes of depression among students during exams requires collaboration among the entire community, including teachers, parents, mental health professionals, and policymakers, to create a healthy educational environment.
Exam-related depression is of a very temporary nature and its effect lasts for the duration of the exam. As exams approach, students may experience symptoms of depression, such as sadness, disinterest in studying, sleep disturbances, and a loss of interest in their studies. Students sometimes feel helpless and hopeless. If these symptoms are not controlled in time, then after some time these symptoms take a serious form of the disease and then the problem becomes even more serious.
Depressed students during exams:
Depression in students during exams can manifest in many ways. Students experience persistent sadness or irritability, lack of motivation, sleep disturbances, difficulty concentrating, feelings of incompetence or failure, and physical symptoms such as headaches or fatigue. Due to the occurrence of these symptoms, students are not able to study properly, as a result of which their results are not as expected.
Academic pressure and expectations:
People around the student start to have very high expectations of the student. They want the student to achieve high scores. Whether the student has studied or not, whether he has the ability or not, everyone has expectations, be it the student’s parents, teachers or even classmates, they have high expectations. These expectations put even more psychological pressure on the student, which plays a significant role in increasing depression.
In today’s competitive education systems, academic success is often equated with intelligence, future success, and personal worth. The fear of disappointing others or missing out on opportunities can lead to long-term depression. Students often fear the consequences, thinking that poor performance will permanently damage their future. This thought can lead to depression.
Fear of failures:
Students’ fear of disappointing others or missing out on opportunities can lead to long-term depression. As this fear grows, students’ mental distress also increases, and their results remain low. Students consider results so much as a threat that they think that the result of every exam is the final result of their life, so keeping their future in mind, they do not want to miss the exams.
Comparison, Competition and criticism:
Comparison, competition and criticism during exam time of any student play vital role for student’s mental or psychological state. Students often compare themselves to better-performing classmates, leading to feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem. This can lead to feelings of depression. In a highly competitive environment, cooperation decreases as students compete with each other, leading to increased rivalry and emotional isolation.
Excessive negative thinking:
Many students keep thinking excessively without any logic, which has no connection with reality and leads to more negative thoughts. To study more, students tend to sleep less because they have to prepare a lot in a limited amount of time. This disrupts their sleep cycle and they don’t get the sleep they need. This can also lead to depression.
Lack of emotional support during exam:
Parents and students often lack communication during exam preparation, which can lead to a lack of emotional support. This lack of emotional support can gradually lead to the development of depressive tendencies in students.
Uncertainty About the Future!:
During the exams itself, students start thinking a lot about their future, like how will the studies be, who will be the teacher, what will the syllabus be like, what will the college be like etc. This excessive thinking about the future helps in generating symptoms of depression in them.
Students feel depression during exams due to the complex interplay of academic pressure, psychological factors, social expectations, biological responses and lifestyle changes in their life. Although exams are intended to assess learning, they often become sources of intense stress that negatively impact mental health.
