Depressive symptoms and its correlates among medical students in Upper Egypt

Abstract

Abstract Background Medical students are at high risk of developing depressive symptoms rather than their age-matched group as medical education is stressful and medical students have psychological and academic stressors. The study aimed to estimate the prevalence of depressive symptoms and the most important correlates associated with it among Assiut University Medical Students in the academic year 2019–2020. It is a cross sectional study conducted among 766 medical students at Assiut University in the academic year 2019–2020, screening for depressive symptoms was by patient health questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Results The mean age of students was 21.27 ± 1.9, 55.5% of them have depressive symptoms. Female students had statistically significantly higher percent of depressive symptoms compared with males (58.9% vs 51.2%), there was statistically significant lower mean socio-economic score among students having depressive symptoms compared to students with no depressive symptoms (5.73 ± 2.46 and 6.22 ± 2.5 respectively). Students having depressive symptoms had higher mean scores of stresses. The multivariable regression revealed that younger age of the students (OR = 0.797; p < 0.001), having a chronic disease (OR = 3.174; P = 0.024), lower life satisfaction score (OR = 0.908; p < 0.001), students with higher medical stress score (OR = 3.596, P < 0.001), and high sense of control score (OR = 2.323; p < 0.001) were the significant correlates of depressive symptoms among medical students. Conclusions Female gender, low socio-economic status, having chronic disease, presence of family history of either mental illness or depressive symptoms, low satisfaction with life, higher total medical stressors, and low sense of control were the most important correlates of depressive symptoms among medical students.