Abstract
Background: The outbreak of severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) has led to long periods of social isolation for individuals across the world. Although medical students generally have a high prevalence of mental health problems, they have received less attention than other groups concerning the impact of SARS-COV-2. Therefore, the present study investigated the mental health status, risk factors, and protective factors for mental health problems in medical students in North China during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic.Methods: A WeChat-based survey, which included the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 and measures of social demographics, was performed twice. Risk and protective factors were identified by binary logistic regression analysis.Results: A total of 702 effective questionnaires were collected in two separate surveys. In total, 24.55% of medical students were suffering anxiety to different degrees of severity, 13.18% were suffering depression in the first survey, and 3.71% wanted to give up working in primary medical care during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic in the second survey. In contrast, during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, a risk factor for anxiety and depression was gender which is male, while being knowledgeable about the SARS-COV-2 pandemic and having a lower academic burden were both protective factors.Conclusions: Measures are required to prevent increases in mental health problems in medical students. Our findings suggest that increasing knowledge about the SARS-COV-2 pandemic and reducing academic burden in medical students is extremely important during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic.
Highlights
Severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) is a beta coronavirus that emerged abruptly in Wuhan, China in December 2019 [1]
Compared to the first survey, there were the total of 315 effevtive participants in the second survey, and it had a higher proportion of females (71.43%), participants living in rural areas (39.37%), those who were non-undergraduates (7.94%), only children (41.27%), and smokers (97.78%)
The present results extended these findings to show that during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, 13.18% of medical students were in a state of mild, moderate, severe, or extremely severe depression and 24.55% of medical students were suffering from some severity of anxiety, 11.63% of medical students were undergoing stress in the first survey, and 3.71% of medical students had chosen to give up their medical careers in the second survey
Summary
Severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) is a beta coronavirus that emerged abruptly in Wuhan, China in December 2019 [1]. To reduce the spread of SARS-COV2, social isolation was performed in every country [3]. Long-term social isolation can cause a series of mental health problems including stress, anxiety, and depression [4]. The outbreak of severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) has led to long periods of social isolation for individuals across the world. Medical students generally have a high prevalence of mental health problems, they have received less attention than other groups concerning the impact of SARS-COV-2. The present study investigated the mental health status, risk factors, and protective factors for mental health problems in medical students in North China during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic
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