Abstract
Background: Students are believed to be at a high risk with a marked increase in their internet usage worldwide. Problematic Internet use (PIU) is characterized by a lack of control over the concern, encouragement, or problems related to anxiety, stress and depression as a result of its use. Aim of the study: to identify the relation between problematic internet use and mental health status of technical nursing students in Tanta city. Design: A descriptive design was used in this study. This study was conducted at two secondary technical nursing schools and the technical health institute (nursing branch) in Tanta city. Subjects: A convenient sample of 273 students in the above mentioned schools was included in the study. Three tools were used by the researchers to obtain the necessary data, the structured questionnaire schedule, General health questionnaire (GHQ-28) and the Internet Addiction Test (IAT). Results: More than half of the studied students had frequent problems related to internet usage (56.4%) and about one third of them (31.9%) had a significant problems. Slightly less than two fifths of the studied subjects (38.8 %) had poor mental health. Significant differences were observed between the studied level of internet usage and their age, sex and social level (P= ˂0.001, 0.009 and 0.034) respectively. Conclusion: There were strong significant positive correlation between the level of internet usage and students' mental health status. Recommendations: Further studies needed to develop and implement rehabilitation programs, for students with psychological problems related to excessive internet usage.
Highlights
Internet becomes a critical part of modern life
As for the degree of internet use, the current study revealed that only 11.7 % of the studied subjects were average user of internet while the majority of them were identified to have frequent and significant problem related to internet usage
There have been several studies about the prevalence rate of Internet addiction in the middle and Far East. Among those studies an Iranian study done by Mazhari (2012)(42) examining the prevalence of IA among medical students as she found that 21% of the students were identified as problematic Internet users, and Kheirkhah et al (2010)(43) investigated the prevalence of Internet addiction in the Mazandaran province as they found that 22.8% of the Internet users were Internet addicts
Summary
Internet becomes a critical part of modern life. As a medium of information and communication, it has an important place in social and academic life of nursing students in many societies. The internet is the most effective tool in all different areas of science, business, education, culture and politics It brings a huge change and convince; people spend more and more time online, ranged from 19 to 68 hours per week. Problematic internet use refers to the excessive use of internet and significantly influences one’s normal life including psychological, family and social life [6]. Aim of the study: to identify the relation between problematic internet use and mental health status of technical nursing students in Tanta city. Results: More than half of the studied students had frequent problems related to internet usage (56.4%) and about one third of them (31.9%) had a significant problems. Recommendations: Further studies needed to develop and implement rehabilitation programs, for students with psychological problems related to excessive internet usage
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