OBJECTIVE

To explore psychological distress in terms of depression, anxiety, social dysfunction, depressive and somatic symptoms among students appearing for medical school entrance examination.

METHODS

The cross-sectional study was conducted at Peshawar Medical College, Peshawar, Pakistan, from August 2015 to May 2016, and comprised all students who appeared in the written test. The subjects were asked to fill the General Health Questionnaire for the evaluation of psychological distress. Those who scored 24 and more and were called for the entrance interview were further assessed on Hamilton R ating Scale for Depression. SPSS 20 was used for data analysis..

RESULTS

Of the 1334 subjects, 745(55.8%) were males and 589(44.2%) were females. The mean age was 18.9±1.41 years and 182(13.6%) subjects had psychological distress. On the four subscales of the questionnaire, 472 (35.4%) students had somatic symptoms, 560 (42%) had anxiety/insomnia, 819 (61.4%) had social dysfunction and 323 (24.2%) had depressive symptoms. Amongst the 322(24%) students who were called for interviews, 73(22.7%) had psychological distress based on the questionnaire and 9 (2.8%) had depression on the Hamilton scale. There was a significant correlation between female gender and psychological distress based on the questionnaire scores (p<0.05). Among those who had both the assessments, there was no significant gender-based correlation (p>0.05). No significant correlation was found between academic performance and either of the assessment tools (p>0.05 each).

CONCLUSIONS

A significant proportion of students at the medical school entrance examination level had psychological distress.