Prevalence of anxiety among medical students of D.G. Khan Medical College: A cross-sectional study.

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate anxiety levels among medical students of a public medical college by using a self-administered anxiety questionnaire. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Study was conducted on the MBBS students of D.G. Khan Medical College. Period: December 2022 to June 2023. Methods: A validated questionnaire comprised on Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) scale was provided to all MBBS students at D. G. Khan medical college. Sociodemographic variables like; gender, age, locality, and current residential status were included in the questionnaire. The data was transferred to SPSS V-23 to analyze the variance of Anxiety Levels and MBBS study years among both genders. The p-value (p ≤ 0.05) was used to decide significance of the results. Results: The number of respondents was 523 (93.6%) out of 559 enrolled students at the time of the survey. Using the BAI scale, the overall anxiety estimated in MBBS students was 96.4% including male (95.5%) and female (97.0%). However, the prevalence of severe anxiety observed in female (22.2%) students was slightly higher than male (21.9%) students. Moreover, the highest level of severe anxiety (37.1%) was detected in 3^rd year students whereas, the peak value of overall anxiety (23.1%) was detected in 2^nd year students. The gender comparison test (p = 0.006) revealed that females exhibit more anxiety than males. Conclusion: The higher levels of anxiety were consistently observed among female students. The severe anxiety was observed among 3^rd year students, likely due to their transition into the clinical year facing additional c hallenges beyond academics.