Assessment of factors causing depression among academic staff of tertiary institutions in South-West Nigeria

Abstract

Studies have revealed that depression is the current major reason for disability and projected to probably become the second major menace responsible for death globally in the nearest few years. Hence, certain factors causing depression among academic staff of tertiary institutions in South-West region of Nigeria are considered for assessment in this study. The research team developed and administered a structured questionnaire with 232 responses. Factors examined include Personal/Relational Factor (feeling of loneliness, mental health challenge and family crisis) and Professional/Job Factor (job nature, job workload and wrong job placement). Employing Chi-square test of independence in the study, results revealed that monthly income of academic staff is the most significant towards their respective factors with 0.001, 0.000, 0.020 and 0.036. Also, it is shown that the longer academic staff have stayed in service, the more they are likely going to face crisis or challenges in their different families as family crisis or challenge of academic staff is influenced by the number of years that they have spent in service with significant value of 0.001. Furthermore, it is discovered from the study that marital status is insignificant to family crisis or challenge at 0.067. Eventually, the study reveals that the most prevalent factor of depression is Wrong Job Placement as almost all the socio-economic characteristics (age, educational level, years in service and monthly income) are respectively significant with 0.009, 0.007, 0.043 and 0.036 on feeling of being wrongly placed in the current job of these academic staff.