Depression, anxiety and stress among medical students and junior doctors - a cross sectional study in a medical college of india

Background: Presence of psychological morbidity in the form of anxiety, stress and depression among medical students has been reported from different parts of the world including India using various scientifically approved scales. Most of these studies focus on undergraduate medical students. Data on the psychological morbidities among internees, house staffs and post graduate trainees are lacking despite comprising a significant section of the student population in a medical college. Objectives: To assess depression, anxiety and stress and their epidemiological correlates among medical students and junior doctors of a rural medical college of Darjeeling district.
Materials and methods: A descriptive epidemiological study with cross sectional design was carried out among the medical students in North Bengal Medical College, Darjeeling, West Bengal in2016. Ethical clearance was obtained from the Institutional Ethics Committee. Data were collected using the validated Depression, Anxiety &Stress Scale (DASS 21) with additional questions on certain epidemiological correlates. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel data analysed using IBM SPSS 20 and presented using the principles of descriptive and inferential statistics.
Results: A total of 678 medical students participated in the study. Overall proportion of anxiety stress and depression among the study subjects were 52.4%, 31.9% and 45.3% respectively. Female gender, current professional status, tobacco use, residing in the hostels, English as the medium of instruction, students without any worry and not feeling overburdened by the syllabus were identified as predictors significantly associated with anxiety, stress or depression.
Conclusion: The study revealed that a large proportion of medical students were suffering from anxiety, stress or depression. . It requires urgent attention and availability of student counselling and other services to curb these morbidities. Further studies need to be carried out to find out other unseen precipitating factors.