“The association between parental depression and

adolescent’s academic achievement”

Introduction
Depression is a mental health issue that impacts many individuals at any point of their life.
Depression not only effects a person but if also effects the people around the depressed person, it
effects the individual’s personal, occupational life and daily routine activities. It is thought that
depression will affect as many as one in five people throughout the course of their lives. So we
can say that it is a common condition now a days. At the beginning, when people are not much
aware with mental illness, anyone with a mental illness was sort of stigmatized to some degree,
but today we realize that depression in some respects is the same as any physical disease that
may affect the individual. Depression doesn’t make you abnormal or any different to somebody
and there is plenty of help and available treatment to get out of it.
Parental depressive symptoms contribute to one of the most consistent and replicated jeopardy
factors for negative outcomes, particularly in early adolescence. Although Children of depressed
parents are at increased risk of adjustment problems.
Adolescence is a transitional stage of biological, cognitive and social change associated with a
number of health related problems including depression, eating disorders, substance abuse and
dependence, risky sexual dysfunctioning, antisocial and delinquent activities. According to
UNICEF (2011) report it is estimate that around 20 percentage of the world adolescents have
behavioral or mental health problems.
Problem statement
The aim of this thesis is to produce better understanding between parents and child and to
better understand the causes of parental depression and how it affects the adult academic
achievements and other aspects of adolescent’s life.
Nature of the study
In order to understand the term depression and how parental depression is affecting their
adolescent’s mental health and academic performance and achievement. And what are the
causes and effects of parental depression how their child is suffering from the same as their
sufferings.
Purpose of the study
The purpose of this study is to bring awareness among the people that depression is not a
disease that can’t be treated it can be treated through many ways but if it left untreated it can
lead the whole family towards mental health issues. How parents can focus on their adolescent’s
academic career by overcoming their depression. The primary focus is on adolescent’s academic
achievement and parental depression. Somehow the parents expect more from their child and
pressurized their child to perform well it can lead them towards lower performance and
inferiority complex.