Mental Distress after 1st Wave of COVID-19 among Medical Students

Aim: The aim of the current study is to evaluate the mental distress facing by the MBBSs students during the first wave of COVID-19.

Study Design: Cross-sectional.

Place and Duration of Study: Study was conducted at Quaid-e Azam medical college Bahawalpur during the period of May 2020 to July 2020.

Methodology: MBBS undergraduate students were included in the study. For assessing mental stress, the questionnaire used was the modified form of Impact of Event Scale Revised (IES-R). The proforma was prepared by using Google Docs and disseminated through the student’s WhatsApp groups. Data was analyzed by using Special Package for Social Science version-20. Frequency and percentages were calculated for the qualitative variables while association was analyzed by using Chi-square test. p-value ≤0.05 was considered as significant.

Results: About half of the participants were female students i.e. 55.2%. The frequency distribution of stress level among students showed that the majority of participants were facing mild level of stress i.e. 130 participants out of total 310 participants (41.9%), 112 participants were having moderate stress level (36.2%), followed by 53 participants with severe level of stress (17.1%) while 15 participants (4.8%) were having extremely severe intensity of stress. It was also found out that the gender and socioeconomic status have a significant association with the mental stress but the year of study has no any association with the mental stress as reported statistically non-significant p-value.

Conclusion: The current study concluded that the mental distress experienced by medical undergraduate during COVID-19 is more severe than that of the general population and the female students are more prone to develop depressive symptoms. So there is a need of counselling session to improve the mental health of our medical under graduates as they are the future handlers of medical profession.