Impact of covid-19 on education, psychological wellness and life style of dental students in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The COVID-19 epidemic has had a significant impact on dental education, psychological health, and students' way of life worldwide. The new methods of teaching and learning had to be adapted by dental educational institutions. Due to lifestyle changes, COVID-19 had a major negative influence on students' mental health. Therefore, it is of interest to assess depression; anxiety and stress scale (DASS-21) levels experienced by dental students and compare them with gender and course of students. A cross-sectional survey based descriptive study was conducted among 356 undergraduate dental students, aged between 18-31 years, at Riyadh Elm University, Riyadh, kingdom of Saudi Arabia from January – March, 2022. A self-administered structured questionnaire written in English and Arabic language was given to all the willing participants. Four components of the questionnaire covered demographic information, the effect of COVID-19 on dental education, psychological health, and student lifestyle. In order to establish statistically significant variations across genders and student course levels regarding the effect of COVID-19 on dentistry education, the Chi-square test was used. Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare depression, anxiety, stress scales (DASS- 21) with variables such as gender and course level of students. Statistical significance was set at p-value <0.05.A total of 356 dental students were involved in this study with the total response rate of 92.2%.Majority of the respondents were males (56.2%) than females 156 (43.8), aged between 18-22 years (53.4%). Overall, moderate levels of the depression, anxiety and stress scores (DASS-21) were seen among 46.9%, 30.3% and 35.6% of the dental students, respectively. Thus, it can be concluded that COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on dentistry students' education, mental health, and way of life. More women and dentistry students on the clinical level felt the effects on their education. In order to implement psychological empowerment initiatives integrating institutional counseling services for students, the right steps should be done.

The Effect of COVID-19 on Dental Education in Saudi Arabia

“…This reflects the challenges in replicating hands-on clinical training through online platforms. Notably, our findings regarding dissatisfaction rates are higher than those reported in previous studies conducted in Saudi Arabia and Oman, such as those by Al Rawahi et al and Bahanan et al [8,9], but align closely with the results reported by Abdul et al [10]. This discrepancy could be attributed to differences in the timing of data collection.…”

Sociodemographic determinants of depression, anxiety, and stress immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study among university students in Saudi Arabia

“…Scores for each subscale were divided into five levels: normal, mild, moderate, severe, and extremely severe. Stress was classified as normal (0-14), mild (15-18), moderate (19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25), severe (26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33), and extremely severe (34+). Depression was classified as normal (0-9), mild (10-13), moderate (14-20), severe (21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27), and extremely severe (28+).…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, most of the published studies that assessed the psychological impact of COVID-19 among university students in Saudi Arabia were conducted among medical science students (26,(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35). For example, a study was conducted to assess the prevalence of Depression, Anxiety, and Stress symptoms among medical students of Sulaiman Al Rajhi University, Al Bukayriyah, Saudi Arabia during quarantine and while learning online shortly after the announcement of documented COVID-19 cases in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (33).…”