Can reading too much make me run mad? Exploring students’ assumptions and academic performance

Madness, in simple terms, can be defined as a state of severe mental illness (Merriam-Webster 2017). Mental illness, according to the American Psychiatric Association, can be described as a health condition involving changes in thinking, emotion or behaviour (or a combination of these) (American Psychiatric Association 2017).

The etiological/risk factors of mental illness are diverse (Cirulli et al 2009). However, the major factors include developmental stress, substance abuse, and nutritional factors (Dube et al., 2003, Cirulli et al., 2009). Interestingly, there are some superstitious beliefs on the etiological/risk factors of mental illness among lay people, as it is commonly believed among them that mental illness could be caused by God, air pollution, loss of semen/vaginal secretion, planet, and stars (Kishore et al., 2011).

Furthermore, there is an assumption that reading too much could make one to develop severe mental illness (Kanmodi & Almu 2019). In fact, this assumption was reported, in a Nigerian study, to be popular among some medical students (Kanmodi & Almu 2019). It was also reported in the study that those students who had such an assumption were found to have poorer academic performance, compared to those with no such assumption; this suggests that this assumption has associated negative effects on the academic performance of students.

However, in the study, the assumptions of students in other academic disciplines were not explored; this was a limitation of the study, which generated research questions that need to be answered. One of these research questions was: Do students in other health science disciplines assume that ‘reading too much’ could cause of mental illness?

Based on the above, this study aims to compare the prevalence of the assumption that ‘reading too much’ is a cause of mental illness among medical, nursing, and community health science students. This study also aims to explore the relationship between this assumption, among these students, and academic performance. This study is of significance as it provides evidence-based data on the prevalence of this assumption among students in the health science disciplines.

The mean age of the 122 respondents was 27.3 years, majority (61.5%) of them were males, 62.3% were Hausas, 63.1% were single, 78.7% were Muslims, 53.3% were medical students, and 26.2% were in the first year of their current course of study (Table 1).

The majority (95.1% [116/122]) of the respondents had heard of the term ‘madness’ prior to their participation in the study, only 1 (0.8%) reported that they were not sure if they had ever heard of the term, and 5 (4.1%) reported that they had never heard of it. The two most popular sources of information on madness among those respondents who claimed awareness of madness were ‘book’ (61.2% [71/116]) and ‘doctor’ (44.8% [52/116]) (Figure 1).

Figure 1

More than half of the respondents who were from the SON (54.2%) and CHOTP (55.6%) assumed that reading too much could make them run mad (Table 2).

Also, test of associations between variables, using Chi square test, showed that: [1] a higher proportion of those respondents that were not of the assumption that reading too much could make them run mad (i.e., those that chose SD and D in the Likert scale) sat for their O’level examination in one to two attempts before passing all the 5 compulsory subjects they needed to secure an admission into their current course of study, compared to those that were with such an assumption (i.e., those that chose SA and A in the Likert scale) (55/65 [84.6%] versus 30/47 [63.8%]); a higher proportion of those respondents that were not of the assumption that reading too much could make them run mad (i.e., those that chose SD and D in the Likert scale) sat for the entrance examination of their current school before securing admission into their current course of study in one to two attempts, compared to those respondents that were of such assumption (i.e., those that chose SA and A in the Likert scale) (59/65 [90.8%] versus 39/47 [83%]); and a lower proportion of those respondents that were not of the assumption that reading too much could make them run mad (i.e., those that chose SD and D in the Likert scale) had very good to excellent academic performance in their current course of study, compared to those that were of such an assumption (i.e., those that chose SA and A in the Likert scale) (28/65 [43.1%] versus 21/47 [44.7%]) (Tables 2 & 3).

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report, the risk factors for mental illness among school-age individuals are adverse learning environment, difficulties at school, and lack of educational opportunities (WHO, 2012). Interestingly, excessive reading was not listed as a risk factor in the report. However, there has been a fairly popular assumption in our environment that excessive reading can make one to develop mental illness. Based on our observation in our society, we found this assumption to cut across school-age adolescents and young adults, and even middle-aged adults and the elderly (Kanmodi & Almu 2019).

This present study had strengthened previous report, by Kanmodi & Almu (2019), that the prevalence of the assumption that ‘reading too much’ is a risk factor of mental illness is significant among Nigerian students. In this study, we observed that roughly four-tenth (42% [47/112]) of our respondents were of the assumption that excessive reading could make them develop mental illness; this prevalence is higher than that reported by Kanmodi & Almu in a similar study (21.7% [13/60]). Also, in this present study, we observed that this assumption is much more predominant among students of nursing science and community health, unlike among the medical students (Kanmodi & Almu 2019).

The prevalence rate of the assumption that ‘reading too much’ could cause mental illness is lowest among the surveyed medical students, when compared to that observed among the nursing and community health students surveyed in this study. However, the reason for this disparity is not far-fetched: medical students are supposed to have more in-depth knowledge of the pathogenesis of mental illness compared to these other surveyed students, based on the depth of their training in medical sciences.

It is also noteworthy that no significant relationship was observed between academic performance of the respondents and their assumption status on this phenomenon. A similar finding was also reported in the study conducted by Kanmodi & Almu (2019). However, we found in our present study that a higher proportion of those respondents that had this assumption had to sit for their O’level exams and their school entrance examination for three times or more before they could secure admission to their current course of study. Based on this finding, we could suggest that many of the respondents could not put in their best, perhaps due to the fear of developing mental illness from studious academic exercise. Similar finding on this was also reported by Kanmodi & Almu (2019) in their study.

Interestingly, our findings show that, unlike that reported by Kanmodi & Almu (2019) in their study, a lower proportion of those respondents who had no assumption that had reading too much could make them develop mental illness had very good to excellent academic performance in their current course of the study. Based on this finding, we could conclude that the presence of fear of developing mental illness from excessive reading among students does not necessarily imply that they will have poor academic performance. Rather, there are other factors that could also determine their level of academic performance. Some of these factors are student’s level of dedication to academic pursuit, availability of academic resources (e.g., books, lecture notes, etc.), timely and regular examination preparation, and availability of motivated teachers (Sibanda et al., 2015).

However, this study has its limitations. This study adopted the use of convenience sampling technique in the recruitment of the sampling units; hence, each sampling unit did not have equal chance of being selected to participate in the study. Also, this study did not explore in details other factors that could have influenced the academic performance of the study participants, as this was not within the scope of the study. Also, this study is a quantitative study; this study might not have been able to dig into the reasons why the participants had the belief that reading too much could cause mental illness.

Assumption that reading too much could cause madness is a fairly common phenomenon among the surveyed tertiary school students, irrespective of their level of academic performance. There exists the need to disabuse the minds of tertiary school students from the assumption that reading too much could make one run mad. Disabusing the mind of students on this assumption could help them have better outcomes in their academic pursuits and achievement, as extensive reading goes a very long way in building students’ knowledge base.