Mental Health and Coping Strategies among Medical Students

PURPOSE: Recently, concern of the college students' mental health has increased due to their continuous psychologic problems such as suicidal attempt. This study aimed to examine the correlation among depression, stress, self-esteem, and coping strategies of the medical students and also according to the academic year. METHODS: The subject was 384 medical students of K medical school in Korea. Self-rating depression scale, stress scale, self-esteem scale was used for the survey, and academic stress and coping strategies of the students were asked. Frequency analysis, one-way ANOVA, t-test, correlation analysis was carried out. RESULTS: Third year students were under most stress (F=5.67, p=0.000) and had the most students who were moderately (22.9%) and mildly depressed (6.3%). Stress form academic studies and grade was also the highest in third year students. For English fluency, freshmen students scored the top. Academic career stress and school culture stress were higher for year 3, 4, 5, 6 than year 1, 2 students. Differences of the coping strategies by academic year was significant in emotional display. Students who showed high level of depression and stress, also students with low self-esteem used emotional display as their major coping strategy. CONCLUSION: Depending on their academic year medical students' level of depression and stress was different, and they did not use a variety of coping strategies. Therefore, a program which can give a diverse access to variety of coping strategies to relieve students' stress should be developed taking their characteristics of academic year into consideration.