A cross sectional study of sources and severity of stress in first year undergraduates in a medical college of Shivamogga

Abstract

Nowadays a lot of awareness about stress and its effects on mental health is being spread among people. We being medical fraternity should think about stress our undergraduates are going through. Medical education being the toughest academics puts the students in stress. So this study was designed with following objectives: 1. To explore the sources and level of stress in first MBBS students 2. To compare the levels of stress in different groups. The study was conducted in Subbaiah institute of medical sciences, Shivamogga in April 2019. We included 150 first year medical students (2018-19 batch) of both the sexes after getting approval from institutional ethical clearance committee. We used pre formed questionnaire which had demographical details and MSSQ (medical student stress questionnaire) questions.statistical analysis was done using independent student t test. Mean ± SD was calculated.academic related stressor (ARS) was higher than all other stressors. Females had more ARS. Urban background students had more ARS compared to rural background students. We found moderate stress in ARS.ARS is the major stressor perceived, hence measures should be taken to decrease the burden of academic stress in the students.