the prevalence of chronic fatigue syndrome and depression in guilan medical students in 2020

Background: chronic fatigue syndrome (cfs) and depression are specific mentaldisorders that can negatively affect college students’ social, occupational, and academicperformance, especially medical students. this study aimed to investigate the prevalenceof cfs and depressive symptoms and their relationship with medical students.methods: this cross-sectional analytical study was conducted with 175 medical studentsat the guilan university of medical sciences in 2020 in guilan in the north of iran. threelevels of medical students, including basic sciences and physiopathology, externship, andinternship students, participated. a demographic information questionnaire, the beckdepression inventory-ii (bdi-ii), and the chalder fatigue questionnaire (cfq) were usedto collect data. spss 22 was used to analyze the data, including mann-whitney, kruskal-wallis, and spearman tests.results: the mean age of the participants was 23.92 ± 2.04 years. of 175 participants,50.9% were males. in all, 11.4% of subjects reported levels of cfs, and 38.8 % of themshowed levels of depression. the rates of cfs and depressions were not associated withage, gender, marital status, educational level, geographic area, or student habitation(p > 0.05). the use of cigarettes (p = 0.002), alcohol, and substances (p < 0.0001) showed asignificant relationship with higher levels of cfs and depression scores. the relationshipbetween the cfs score and depression was significant (r = 0.523, p < 0.0001).conclusion: the prevalence of cfs and depression among medical students were 11.4%and 38.8%, respectively. there was a positive association between cfs and depression.implementing screening policies is recommended, along with programs to help promotemental and physical health among students.