Anxiety and depression and their interdependent influencing factors among medical students in Inner Mongolia: the cross-sectional survey

• Published in: BMC medical education 2022-11, Vol.22 (1), p.787-11, Article 787
• Main Authors: Wang, Qiuxiang, Zhang, Beisiqi, Zhang, Song, Wei, Chengxi, Fu, Danni, Zhao, Honglin, Bai, Xue
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Anxiety; Anxiety - diagnosis; Anxiety - epidemiology; Anxiety Disorders; Body Weight; China - epidemiology; College Students; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Cross-Sectional Studies; Depression; Depression (Psychology); Depression - diagnosis; Depression - epidemiology; Diet-related factors; Disease transmission; Education; Educational Technology; Family (Sociological Unit); Family medical history; Humans; Informed Consent; Inner Mongolia; Interpersonal Relationship; Likert scale; Likert Scales; Marital Status; Medical education; Medical laboratories; Medical research; Medical students; Mental depression; Mental disorders; Mental health; Prevalence; Preventive medicine; Professional Identity; Psychiatry; Public Schools; Questionnaires; Reproducibility of Results; Researchers; Sampling; Sleep; Social Development; Standard scores; Students, Medical - psychology; Suicide; Surveys and Questionnaires; University students; Well being; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1472-6920; 1472-6920
• DOI: 10.1186/s12909-022-03839-0

Mental health has become a global problem, among which anxiety and depression disorder were ranked as the first and sixth leading causes of disability, respectively, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Medical students experienced higher levels of anxiety and depression than the general population. But there was a lack of research on the emotional situation among medical students in Inner Mongolia. The main objectives of this study were to investigate the prevalence of anxiety and depression symptoms as well as the factors that influence them among medical students in Inner Mongolia. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 1282 students from a university in Inner Mongolia, China, ranging in age from 16 to 27 years. They were assessed demographic indicators, the disorder of anxiety and depression using Zung's Self-Rating Anxiety Scale and Self-Rating Depression Scale (SAS and SDS) by an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire. The internal reliability and validity of the questionnaire were determined using Cronbach's alpha coefficient, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO), and Bartlett's sphericity. T-tests and one-way ANOVA were used to explore factors, including demographic and behavioral information influencing anxiety and depression disorder. According to the above results of exploring the influencing factors based on univariate analysis, significant factors (p