Stress, Anxiety, and Depression among Medical Undergraduate Students and Their Coping Strategies

Abstract

Background. Students’ mental health deteriorates after they enter medical school and continues to deteriorate throughout their training. Every individual has a certain number of coping resources, and once these coping resources are challenged, mental illness usually results. Objective. We aimed to determine the prevalence and severity of depression, anxiety, and stress as well as coping strategies used by medical undergraduate students enrolled in Arsi University. Methods. Institution-based, cross-sectional design was conducted on 265 sampled medical students. Participants were selected by a systematic, random-sampling technique. Data were collected by pretested, structured, and self-administrated questionnaires. Afterwards, logistic regression analysis was employed, and statistical significance was accepted at p < 0.05 . Results. In the present study, 5 questionnaires were rejected for incompleteness, resulting in a response rate of 98.1%. The mean age of the respondents was 22.03 (SD = 2.074) years. The current prevalence rates of depression, anxiety, and stress were 52.3%, 60.8%, and 40.4%, respectively. The proportion of respondents who had extremely severe symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress was 6.2%, 16.2%, and 2.3%, respectively. Depression was specifically associated with monthly income and residency. Anxiety was significantly associated with residency and educational level. Stress was associated with monthly income, educational level, and residency. The main coping strategy adopted by the respondents was religion with a mean (±SD) of 5.94 (1.85). The coping mechanisms of denial, substance use, behavioral disengagement, venting, and self-blame were significantly associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. Conclusion. Overall prevalence rate of depression, anxiety, and stress is alarmingly high. Therefore, implementing stress reduction interventions and establishing a student counseling center are highly recommended.

Psychological disorders and coping strategies among undergraduate medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

“…About the coping strategies, our study supports evidence from a previous observation related to medical students with depression, anxiety, and stress using more avoidance strategies during the pandemic 35 . Additionally, a prior study with Chinese medical students showed that depression and anxiety negatively correlated with positive coping and positively correlated with negative coping 51 .…”

“…Compared with previous studies about mental health problems among medical students in Brazil 2,33 , and with other studies during the COVID-19 pandemic [34][35][36] , the medical students who participated in our study show higher prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. The pandemic context seems to contribute to an increase in the overall prevalence of depression and anxiety in undergraduate medical students 10 .…”

Trait emotional intelligence as predictor of psychological health in undergraduate medical students: A hierarchical multiple regression approach

“…Firstly, over the past decades, disturbing trends toward global increase in prevalence of depression, anxiety, stress, [13,24] burnout, substance abuse as well as suicidal ideations in doctors and medical students in comparison to their peer groups and general population have been consistently reported. [14] Second, more and more studies are recently reporting development of symptoms of psychological distress quite early among budding doctors during their formative years in medical institutes. [12,13] This, in turn, poses hindrance in their academic capabilities during student life and can have deleterious effects in their clinical acumen in future.…”

“…Consistent with prior studies, our correlational analysis data illustrated the beneficial effect of TEI on PH of medical students. [13,14] Negative association seen between global TEIQue-sf and DASS-21 scores indicates that students who possessed higher TEI skills experienced fewer symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression and were psychologically healthier as compared to their counterparts with lower TEI. Moreover, results of regression analysis revealed that TEI explained a statistically significant portion of variance in DASS-21 scores not explained by socio-demographics and educational dimensions.…”

“…[13] Mental well-being is an issue of concern in the field of medicine with alarmingly, increasing trends in the prevalence of psychological morbidity being consistently reported from across the world among various health-care professionals. [14] There is an important need to identify predictors of mental well-being especially in budding doctors as development of psychological distress symptoms has been reported to occur even in the psychologically healthy students during their formative years in medical institutes. [15] This, in turn, predisposes to decreased attention and learning ability in them during the student life and is potentially detrimental during their clinical practice in future.…”