Assessment of depression, anxiety and stress and its association factors among medical students in the east Mediterranean region related to COVID-19 outbreak in 2020

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 outbreaks are spreading rapidly across the world and has raised global public health concerns for all countries around the world. This study aims to evaluate the impact of loekdowns/shutdowns on the medical students from different fields to assess the prevalence of developing symptoms without any previous possible contact with an infected person. This is to understand how mental illnesses like anxiety, depression and stress play their role in this psychosomatic effect. METHODS: In this study we adopted a cross-sectional survey design included all the medical students in the EMR region except those who were infected were excluded from the study. The structured questionnaires were designed to cover several areas of mental health status using the depression, anxiety, and stress scale (DASS-21). We used the 21 version of the statistical program SPSS for data entry and analysis. RESULTS: Our study findings revealed that the scores of depression, anxiety and stress were 7.78, 6.08 and 8.58 among participants respectively. The majority of our sample were from Iraq and 88% of them were medical students. There were statistically significant differences between the scores of the DASS-21 and the symptoms of COVID-19 that were experienced by the respondents. CONCLUSIONS: According to our study we found that the scores of depression, anxiety and stress were 7.78, 6.08 and 8.58 respectively. The scores have been influenced by many factors mainly the gender. The symptoms that the respondents experienced during the quarantine time were headache, myalgia and breathing difficulties.