Depression and its Associated factors in medical students: A cross sectional study

Aim: to assess depression and its associated factors in medical students. methods: the cross-sectional study was conducted at government khawaja muhammad safdar medical college sialkot from march to april 2016. 200 medical students of 3rd and 4th year mbbs were included. students suffering from severe medical,surgical,psychotic illness and any general medical illness effecting brain directly or indirectly were excluded. written informed consent was taken. beck depressive inventory-ii was administered. data was analyzed by using spps version 21. results: there were 102 students from third year and 98 students from fourth year. the mean age of the students was 21.81.91 years. there were 72(36%) males and 128 (64%) females. out of the total 200 students 67(33.5%) were suffering from depression. mild depression was present in 33 (17.5%) students. moderate depression was present in 25 (12.5%) and severe depression was present in 9 (4.5%) students. pearson correlation test was then applied. p value was set at <0.05. it showed a significant association of depression with gender (p=0.02) failure in examination (p=0.03) and family or past history of psychiatric illness (p=0.02). there was no association of depression with age (p=0.17),economic status of the family (p=0.06) or residence of the student (p=0.24). conclusion: about one third (33.5%) of the medical students were suffering from depression. depression was associated with socio-demographic and academic variables explained in results.