mental health status among iranian medical university students: a cross-sectional study

Background: mental health status of university students is a critical issue due to its essential role instudents’ academic performance. therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the mental health status of firstyearstudents at hamadan university of medical sciences in 2020.methods: all first-year students of hamadan university of medical sciences entered this cross-sectionalstudy through census sampling. two questionnaires, the goldberg’s general health questionnaire-12(ghq-12) as a screening instrument, and a researcher-made questionnaire were used to collectdemographic information. after data collection, the chi-square test and logistic regression coefficient wereapplied to analyze the data at a significance level of 0.05.results: the results showed that out of 875 students, 170 cases (19.4%) suffered from mental disorders,including depressed mood (93.5%) and anxiety attack (22%) as the most and least common disorders,respectively. fitting the logistic regression model revealed that the highest educational degree (p < 0.001,medical residency), admission quotas other than the free quota (p = 0.03), high (p = 0.04) and low (p = 0.01)financial status, and fathers’ unemployment (p = 0.04) increased the chance of mental health disorders.conclusion: due to the high rate and negative consequences of mental health problems in universitystudents, it is recommended that university counseling centers provide services for students with a focuson coping with more frequent mental disorders. finally, it is suggested they have yearly follow-up surveysto recognize the effects of the university environment and different conducted programs on the students’mental status.