‘Mental Health Study’: The Rural Population Fares Better than the Medical Staffs & Students of the Area; A Cross Sectional Analysis

Abstract

Mental health is a perennially neglected domain; more so, it is a comparative evaluation across different accessible strata. Aim: The reporting cross-sectional study aimed at enumerating and comparing different stress factors amongst teachers, students, clerical staffs and local residents in a rural medical university and its field practice area. Result: A total of 400 participants were studied over a period of 3 months belonging to four groups with equal number (50 each). Out of these 221(55.25%) recorded mild stress and 10(2.5%) recorded stress scores needing urgent intervention. For the student, new entrants (< 3 years of residential experience) had higher stress prevalence at 36(72%) as compared to their seniors at 27(54%) who had a history of > 3 year residential experience. For faculty, 38(76%) recorded moderately high stress score irrespective of their campus residency. For clerical and paramedical staffs, duration of residence was detrimental in stress generation. Moderate and severe stress was apparent in the less than 3 years resident category at 6(12%) and 1(2%) as compared to 1 (2%) and 0 (0%) in over 3 year groups. The natives of the rural area experienced lowest stress level, with an average stress score of 169.44, for males and 170.42 for female which was less than the cut off value of 178. Conclusion: Rural residency with nativity status and longer duration of stay for working and student class were associated with less mental stress level where as new students and faculties of the health university experienced a higher score. The result points at initiating intervention strategy at work place for stress management. How to cite this article: Mishra BN, Gupta MK. ‘Mental Health Study’: The Rural Population Fares Better than the Medical Staffs & Students of the Area; A Cross Sectional Analysis. J Adv Res Med Sci Tech 2020; 7(1&2): 4-7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24321/2394.6539.202001