Evaluation of Perceived Stress Levels and Its Source Among Dental Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

CONTEXTRecent reports show high amount of academic stress among the students and chronic stress is shown to have a negative effect on cognitive functioning and learning of students. AIMSThe purpose of study was to determine the prevalence of self-perceived stress among dental students and to observe any possible association between the levels of stress and (a) academic year, (b) motivation to study dental science, (c) medium of study at 10+2 level, (d) mother tongue, (e) presence of perceived physical problems. SETTINGS AND DESIGNThe entire dental students in the five academic years of the Mamata Dental College were selected for the study. The study was cross-sectional in design. METHODS AND MATERIALWe used the Kessler 10 Psychological Distress instrument (K10) to assess the psychological stress along with a semi-structured questionnaire for the socio-demographic details. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USEDDescriptive statistics were used for summarizing the study and outcome variables. Pearson's chi-square test was used to see for the association between a categorical outcome and different study variables. P value of <0.05 was considered significant. RESULTSResults show the association between the psychological stress and the category of admission to the course. We also found an association between the students who perceived physical problems as a source of stress and the level of stress. CONCLUSIONSOur study shows significant association between two study variables and the psychological stress score. First one is the perception of physical problem as source of stress and the second outcome variable was the category of admission to the dental course.