Social Risk Factors Contributing to Anxiety, Depression and Stress among Indian Healthcare Students during Lockdown

The increase in mental health disorders among the general population, healthcare workers and students during the pandemic was evident. There are scanty reports regarding the mental health status of students in the health care services from India during the pandemic lockdown. This study aims to find the risk factors of anxiety and stress among these students and to evaluate the adapting mechanisms to alleviate the same.

A web-based cross-sectional survey was perfomed in students undergoing undergraduate courses in various healthcare services after institutional ethical clearance. The study tool was a pre-validated self-administered questionnaire in the google form. The link was shared in various WhatsApp groups to be shared among students with a brief description of the study after proper content validation.

Of the 527 respondents, 291 (56%) were females, 385 (74%) were in MBBS Courses, and 178 (34%) were from government colleges. Prevalence of anxiety, depression and stress were 372 (70.6%), 360 (68.3%) and 262 (49.7%), respectively. The mean scores of anxiety, depression and stress were 14.33 ± 10.4, 17.24 ± 12.21 and 16.60 ±10.4, respectively. The presence of anxiety, depression and stress was not associated with age, course and year of study, type of Institutions in which they study, socioeconomic status and performance in the recent written examination. There was no association of gender with anxiety and depression, but females had more stress than males (p = .025). Extremely severe levels of anxiety, depression and stress were seen in 158 (30%), 124 (23.5%) and 43 (8%), respectively. A total of 296 (57%) of the students started a new hobby during the lockdown. Students who felt relaxed after talking to their teachers or mentors, students who shared talks with family members and friends, students whose parental fights were less, and students who opened up with parents were less likely to have anxiety and stress.

The prevalence of anxiety, depression and stress in healthcare students from our country was very high. Most of the students needed motivation during the pandemic lockdown. Proper psychological support to students of health care services is a necessity in such a crisis situation.