The objective of the research was to study the relationship between Anxiety, Depression and Academic Achievements among new students in a diploma nursing program in South – south Nigeria. The study adopted the triangulation of prospective cohorts study and cross sectional survey. The entire 107 new students were proposed as the population for the study; while census constituted the sample size. But due to anxiety, seven (7) students left the class before the examination when part of the data was collected while two (2) students were advised to leave on account of indiscipline. So, 98 respondents were eventually utilized as the population for the study. The research instrument was Anxiety and Depression Scale; it was adapted and revalidated to ensure culture-fairness. The instrument was administered in the class before the examination. The scores generated were then triangulated with their examination performance using the Pair wise correlation with JMP statistical Discovery Software. The results showed that the mean ± SD of academic performance for the female students was 56.11±7.04; while that of the males was 62.31±5.55 at significant p-value of 0.001. But the female depression index was found to be 48.70± 8.23 at test statistics p-value of 0.069. So the academic achievement correlates with the depression index at 0.1826. On the other hand, the mean± SD of the female anxiety index was 46.64± 10.89, while that of the males was 44.17±10.93 at test statistics at p-value of 0.337. And the anxiety index negatively correlates with the academic performance at - 0.1644. On the whole, 51 students (52%) finally passed, while 47 students (48%) did not pass the examination.

Keywords : New Students, Academic Achievements, Anxiety & Depression.