Assessment Of Mental Health And Its Association With Socio Demographic Variables Among Students

Abstract

The mental health of pharmacy students has been poor compared to other disciplines and has led to personal and professional consequences. The study was conducted to assess the prevalence of mental health of pharmacy students. It includes 351 randomly selected pharmacy students from a College of Pharmacy located in South India. A self-administered questionnaire was used to elicit information from the respondents. A score of ≥ 3 suggested poor mental while a score < 3 represented good mental health. Data were summarized using proportions, and chi-square test was used to explore associations between categorical variables. Level of significance was set at p < 0.05. The mean age of the respondents was 23.4 ± 4.3 years, 63.8% were males, and 0.091% was from the sixth and 23.07% from the fourth year levels of study. Based on the results 39.2% had a poor mental health status, compared to 60.8% with good mental health status. The factors significantly associated with poor mental health, were recent experience of mistreatment by trainers or colleagues, perceived inadequate monthly allowance and perception that medical training is stressful (p < 0.05). More than third of undergraduate pharmacy students with traits of poor mental health, provision of accessible mental health services/counselling is strongly recommended early in their training. More than half of students were responded that, they lost their sleep over worry and they had a feeling that they couldn’t overcome difficulties. Similarly, 63.81% of students lost their self-confidence and 66.09% students thought themselves worthless.

Keywords

• Assessment
• Mental health status
• Pharmacy students
• Association
• Socio demographic variables

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