Perception of stress, anxiety, depression and coping strategies among medical students at Oman Medical College

Objective: To explore the stress sources, prevalence of anxiety and depression and coping strategies among preclinical and clinical under graduate medical students. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted on Oman Medical College Students of pre-clinical and clinical years. Data was collected using Medical Student Stressor Questionnaire (MSSQ), Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HAD) and COPE questionnaire. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics 20.0). Results: A total of 288 participants were enrolled in which 123 were pre-clinical and 165 were clinical medical students. Nearly two thirds (78.1%) of students were aged between 20-24 years. Among all 87.5% (252) were females and 12.5% (36) were males. Collective score of academic stress factors in the pre-clinical group was not statistically different (p = 0.865) to the clinical group. There was no significant difference (P: 0.826; 95% CI: -3.511-2.804) in the mean score of preclinical and clinical group regarding Social Stress factors. Coping strategies to control stress score in the pre-clinical group was statistically significantly (p < 0.001) higher than the clinical group. Conclusion: The higher level of stress is associated with poor academic performance, large content of study material, exam and time constraints. Coping strategies in students were mainly better time management, emotional support, talking to family members/ friends helps and good sleep relaxes them to control stress.