Association between anxiety symptoms and social ecological risk factors among medical students / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To understand anxiety symptoms among medical college students and their relationship with social ecological risk factors, so as to provide reference for mental health promotion among medical students.@*Methods@#From September to October 2021, a convenient cluster sampling method was used to include 1 274 freshmen to senior students of a medical school in Taiyuan City, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 and adolescent social ecological risk factors assessment questionnaire were used. Multivariate binary Logistic regression was used to analyze the association between anxiety symptoms and social ecological risk factors among medical students.@*Results@#The overall detection rate of anxiety symptoms among medical students was 16.2%. The rate of anxiety varied significantly by grade (freshman: 19.9%, sophomore: 13.0%, junior: 14.0%, senior: 18.9% ) and number of friends (≤2: 22.8%, 3-5: 14.4%, ≥6: 11.8%) ( χ 2=8.70, 16.34, P <0.05). Spearman correlation analysis showed that individual, family, school, community, policy, culture, time, and total score in socio ecological risk factors were positively associated with anxiety symptom scores at different levels of risk ( r=0.33, 0.25, 0.32, 0.16, 0.15, 0.16, 0.16, 0.35, P <0.01). Logistic regression analysis showed that high risk for personal dimension of the socio ecological risk factors was positively associated with rate of anxiety symptoms among medical students ( OR=3.32, 95%CI =1.66-6.61), and remained positively associated ( OR=2.98, 95%CI =1.49-5.94) after adjusting for grade and number of friends ( P <0.01).@*Conclusions@#Exposure to high personal dimensions of socio ecological risk factors increases the risk of developing anxiety symptoms among medical students. A focus should be placed on the personal factors associated with anxiety to promote medical students mental health.