A STUDY ON STRESS AND DEPRESSION AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS

Objectives: Identification of stress prevalence amongst undergraduate medical students and examine the relationship between stress and academic year, physical problems, regularity, grades. Methodology: 600 medical students from College of Medicine, Allied Hospital Faisalabad were enlisted in the present study. They were studying in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th years. They were asked to complete a stress inventory (Kessler10). Results: After getting 83 percent response rate, total 494 responses were recorded. 57 percent subjects were found with all kinds of stress whereas severe stress was observed in 19.6 percent of the cases. A significant relationship was found between years of study and stress levels. The relationship between stress levels and academic grades was not found statistically substantial as distribution of stress prevalence was not considerably dissimilar across each of 04 educational grades. Main reason of stress was their studies (60.30 percent). Home environment was the reason in 2.8 percent of the cases. However, study population in 36.9 percent of the cases did not demonstrate any other potential reason of stress. Conclusion: During the preliminary three years of academic studies, serious psychological distress was observed in the students. It may be a cause of challenge to students' support services delivery to further alleviate mental issue and present them with common health strategies to cope with such issues.