Assessment of Mental Health among Iranian Medical Students : A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Abstract:Objectives: More mental morbidities were reported in medical students than their nonmedical peers, which may negatively influence their lives and future career. The aim of this study was to assess the mental health status among medical students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Method:Two hundred and eight 1 st to 4 th year Medical students took part in this cross-sectional study. General Health Questionnaire with 28 items (GHQ-28) was used for data collection. We performed descriptive statistics, Mann Whitney U test, one way ANOVA and Tukey's post hoc and Kruskal Wallis H and Chi square test for statistical analysis. Results:The mean age of participants was 20.70 ± 1.14 (mean ± SD) years. More than half of them (54.4%) had total GHQ score above the cut-off point considered as probably abnormal mental health status. Years of education, positive family history and low satisfaction of the medicine discipline affected their mental health. Third and fourth year students had significantly higher mean scores of total GHQ (p-value = 0.009) and anxiety, somatic and social subscales (p-value = 0.001, 0.004 and 0.026). Students with positive family history of mental illness and low satisfaction of field of the study significantly had higher GHQ scores (p-value = 0.012 and < 0.001 respectively). Conclusion:Poor mental health prevalence is high among medical students in Shiraz. Proper changes in educational programs and other effective interventions to raise the students' satisfaction may reduce the effect of other stress reasons and improve their mental health status.

Mental Health Status Among Moroccan Medical Students at the Cadi Ayyad University

“…Assessment of psychological morbidity or mental health status of the respondents using the GHQ12 was a key finding in this study. The prevalence of psychological morbidity was 66.76%.This was found to be high compared to other studies [18,19,22,23]. However, studies conducted among medical students in Australia, England and Malaysia, which used the same cut off as the present study, showed comparable results as observed in the present study [14,24,25] Table 2.…”

“…The reason behind this remains unclear. However, other studies reported contrary results which indicated associations with year level [22,23,[37][38][39].…”

Prevalence of poor mental health among medical students in Nepal: a cross-sectional study

“…Previous studies report varying relationship between female gender and depression. Some studies [ 10 , 13 ] show higher prevalence in female students while other studies [ 11 , 12 , 14 ] show no difference. High prevalence of depression seen in female medical students has been linked to personality traits [ 34 ], gender inequity and associated stigma [ 35 ].…”

“…Poor mental health among medical students has been reported from various parts of Asia including India [ 10 – 12 ], Pakistan [ 13 ], Iran [ 14 ], Malaysia [ 15 ], China [ 16 ] and Saudi Arabia [ 4 ]. Poor mental health is found to be associated with serious thoughts of dropping out of medical school [ 17 ], substance abuse [ 18 ], burnout and suicidal ideation [ 19 ].…”

Adjustment Disorder Among Medical Students in Arabian Gulf University Bahrain, a Cross-Sectional, Descriptive Study.

“…Medical student begin with premedical year, students at this level were at higher stress because of the undeveloped coping skills (10) . Medical students in general have to read a condense materials, and most of this important material is in 3rd and 4th year so students at this periods were found to be more anxious (11) Medical student transition from basic science to clinical years was yet another factor that contributed to their stress. Other study found that first clinical year (year5) Students were more stressed than the second clinical year (year6) (12) .…”