health behaviors of albanian students at the university of medicine during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic

Background: the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic has affected humanity in all life areas, particularly stress levels and mental health issues. objectives: the present research aimed to explore the knowledge, stress level, social distancing, and mental health of the students at the university of medicine in albania during the covid-19 pandemic. methods: we conducted an anonymous online-based validated survey. we used the perceived stress scale (pss10) and the perception of covid-19’s impact (pci) on well-being. the study’s inclusion criteria included having access to the internet and being a student at the university of medicine in tirana, albania. we used the statistical package spss 26.0 in this study. to analyze numeric variables, we used descriptive statistics and the chi-square test to analyze cross-tabulations of the survey response data for categorical variables. results: out of 521 students participating in our study (median age = 20 (1.3) years), 484 (92.9%) were female, and 37 (7.1%) were male; 62.4% had an adequate understanding of the transmission ways of covid-19 (p = 0.0002); 16.8% of the students reported that social distancing had a significant impact on their psychological status, while 6.33% reported a moderate impact, with a statistically significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.0001). concerning the students’ approach to trusted sources of information during the covid-19 pandemic, 85.4% reported that they trusted information from friends, 11.1% from the world health organization (who), and 2.1% from the government (p = 0.0001). we observed a positive correlation according to pearson chi-square and the likelihood ratio tests between treatment for health problems and health risks of the covid-19 pandemic (p = 0.0041); 4.4% of students have reported being treated for mental health issues during the covid-19-related quarantine period (p = 0.0002). conclusions: future lockdown strategies should consider the detrimental effects on student mental health. based on the findings of our study, the covid-19 pandemic caused significant distress among students. universities should also adopt a creative and supportive approach to encourage and tackle students’ mental health problems during a pandemic.