Objectives: To determine the prevalence of the assumption that ‘reading too much’ could cause madness (i.e., severe mental illness) among medical, nursing, and community health students, and also explore the relationship between these students’ status on this assumption and their academic performance. Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study conducted among a convenient sample of medical, nursing, and community health students (n = 122) studying within the Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital campus, Sokoto, Nigeria. Study tool was a paper questionnaire, which obtained information on the demographic profile, awareness of ‘madness’, assumption that ‘reading too much’ is a cause of