How depression affects school?

In general, depression affects pretty much all areas of your life.  So the common symptoms associated with depression are poor sleep and appetite, low mood, poor concentration, and little to no interest in activities you normally enjoy.  Let’s break these symptoms down as to how they will impact the school.

For sleep and appetite: Poor sleep affects our cognitive functioning, which means that thinking clearly and effectively will be affected.  Which will then make it more challenging to study or complete assignments.  In terms of poor energy, very similar responses but different reasoning.  If your appetite is poor and you are not eating, you will experience low energy from a lack of caloric intake, leading to impaired cognition.  If your appetite is poor and you overeat, you will experience increased lethargy and low motivation.   

For low mood:  For most people, when they are experiencing a low mood, much of their thoughts tend to ruminate/circumvent negative thoughts.  Which continues to exacerbate the low mood.  This will likely make it more challenging to engage in school work and school social events in terms of affecting school. 

Poor concentration: Various factors could influence poor concentrations, as noted above.  But in general, a symptom of depression is poor concentration.  When considering school work and projection, the quality of your work will be likely to lower, and it may take you longer to get the outcome of need/desire for your schoolwork. 

Little interest: Having a minimal interest in engaging in activities can directly impact your schoolwork; this will likely lead to procrastination and/or missed deadlines.  Not only will this affect the outcome of your grades, but it will affect the emotional outcome of how much you are enjoying the work you are doing. 

Something to keep in mind with these different factors is that you may/may not experience them all simultaneously. You may experience these symptoms intermittently and in different patterns.  What is most important is insight/awareness of these symptoms occurring in general and then having a coping plan to address the onset of the symptoms versus letting the symptoms worsen and become more challenging to manage.