Sources of stress and well-being among Saudi Arabian undergraduate dental students

The study aimed to evaluate the sources of stress and well-being among Arabian dental undergraduate students. The online questionnaire containing three domains, sociodemographic, Dental Environmental Scale-39, and WHO well-being scale-6, was sent to dental undergraduate students across Saudi Arabia. The responses of the participants were measured on a scale ranging from 0 (not stressful) to 5 (highly stressful). The achieved stress scores were compared using SPSS version 17.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, USA) with a P-value of <= 0.05 of a significant level. Five hundred and ninety-nine participants from 25 dental schools in Saudi Arabia were involved in the state study sample. The majority of the participants were males, 57.9% (347), and 30% of the participants were interns. The mean Dental Environment Stress (DES) scores for females and males were 3.42 +/- 0.81 and 3.2 +/- 0.8, respectively (p > 0.05). The mean DES stress scores for first, second, third, fourth, fifth-year students, and interns were 2.96 +/- 0.19, 3.15 +/- 1.1, 3.14 +/- 0.81, 3.45 +/- 0.77, 3.45 +/- 0.8, and 3.9842 +/- 0.72 (p < 0.05). Female dental students (3.06 +/- 0.88) reported higher stress scores for the living accommodation DES domain than the males (2.93 +/- 0.77) (p < 0.05). Male students (3.02 +/- 1.02) reported a more increased well-being index compared to females (2.67 +/- 0.94) with non-statistical significance (p > 0.05). Third-year dental students (3.05 +/- 0.93) scored higher on well-being, while first-year students scored low (2.34 +/- 0.80). An association was found between first-year perceived stress and well-being scores among the study population for living accommodation, personal, and aca-demic factors (p < 0.05). Within the study's limitations, Saudi dental undergraduate students had high levels of perceived stress. Among them, female students were more stressed about living accommodations than males. Fifth-year students are more stressed compared to other years dental undergraduate students. The well-being of dental undergraduate students attending dental schools is associated with living accom-modations, personal factors, and academic work in Saudi Arabia.