Abstract
Background: Dental education is considered a highly stressful training process that can lead to high levels of perceived stress, anxiety and depression which can affect wellbeing and performance; Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the levels of stress, anxiety and depression experienced by dental students during their pre- clinical and clinical year and compare it to professional dentist.
Methods: In the present cross-sectional study, 42 general dentists and 131 undergraduate dental students at Tel Aviv University in the fourth, fifth and sixth year were participated. The psychological well- being was assessed by Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) which measure the severity of psychological distress by a reliable self- rated questionnaire. Mann-Whitney tests were performed to evaluate the effects of gender on the DASS scores. Kruskal-Wallis one-way tests were used for comparison between dental students in their fourth. Fifth, sixth year of study and dentists.
Results:overall prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress was 45.1%, 48.8% and 47.1% respectively. Clinically significant (severe and extremely severe) depression, anxiety and stress were experienced by 16.2% (n=28), 21.6% (n= 37) and 20.9% (n=36) of the participants, respectively. Significant differences were found in relation to DASS category (normal, mild, moderate, severe, and extremely severe) of depression (p=0.001), anxiety (p=0.011) and stress (p=0.018) in which higher level of psychological symptoms of anxiety and depression were observed in fifth-year students and lower levels in dentists, compared to the fourth and sixth years.
Conclusions: High levels of depression, anxiety, and stress were observed in dental students during their clinical and pre-clinical years of study. However, these levels significantly decreased upon becoming a dentist.