Correlation of type of Personality and Perceived Stress during COVID-19 Lockdown Period among Students of a Medical College in Tamil Nadu – A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background: On March 11 2020, WHO declared “the novel coronavirus” outbreak as a global pandemic affecting millions of lives. Students' mental health has also deteriorated as a result of this. Evaluation of personality and other traits can be useful in understanding the psychodynamics during such challenging times. However, there are only very few studies to highlight the effect of lockdown on students and henceforth to get a deeper insight we have decided to correlate the type of personality and the amount of perceived stress during COVID-19 lockdown period among medical students. Objective: To correlate the type of personality and the amount of perceived stress during COVID-19 lockdown period among medical students. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among medical undergraduate students in a private Medical College in Tamil Nadu between July to December 2020. A total of 400 MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) students from 1st year to final year were involved in the study. Perceived Stress Scale was used to correlate the type of personalities among medical students. Conclusion: With the COVID-19 outbreak, students and healthcare providers were shown to have higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression than other professions. Despite the present situation, mental health of majority of the medical student were shown to be well within the moderate stress level, showing their optimum stress handling abilities and this study also highlights the significance of stress management among medical students.