ABSTRACT

Backgrounds: In the modern era of medical teaching, medical college is a place full of stress, depression and anxiety among students that exert a negative effect on their academic performance and psychosocial well-being.  

Aim: To determine the prevalence of depression and anxiety (by DASS scoring system) in male and female students of private medical school in integrated teaching system.

Methodology: This study with enrolled students (n=190) was carried out after research ethical committee’s IIMC approval at Islamic International Medical college, Riphah university, Islamabad-Pakistan. Both male and female medical students were enrolled. Different levels of depression and anxiety among them were noted after filling DASS questionnaire proforma. Data was analyzed by SPSS. Chi square was used to determine the association of depression and anxiety with gender and year of study as p-value ≤ 0.05 was considered significant.

Results: The mean age of all enrolled students was 22.5 ± 1.6 with the range of 20 to 24 years. The prevalence of depression was 46.3%, whereas anxiety was 71.6% among all enrolled subjects. The difference between male & female students depending on depression parameter was statistically significant with p-value of <0.001.

Conclusion: We concluded that female medical students develop more depression and anxiety in integrated medical education system than male students.

Keywords: Medical students, Depression, Anxiety and DASS system.