Assessment of anxiety and depression among medical students of Sahiwal Medical College: A cross-sectional study.

Abstract

Objective: To estimate anxiety and depression among medical students and its association with demographic factors. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Sahiwal Medical College, Sahiwal. Period: October 2024 to July 2025. Methods: Screener instruments like Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were used to identify anxiety and depression levels. Data was transferred to Excel and SPSS V-23 for descriptive statistics, variance analysis and Chi-square (χ²) tests to investigate the associations between demographic variables. The significance of the results was compared with p-value (p ≤ 0.05) to explore sociodemographic’s differences. Results: The response of 441(74.6%) students (anxiety; 223, depression; 218) out of 591 enrolled at the time of study was recorded. Results reveal that overall anxiety disorders was 88.8% which includes low anxiety 58.3%, moderate anxiety 16.1%, and severe anxiety 14.3%, and 39.9% of students suffered from depression (any level). There were higher rate of moderate to severe anxiety in female students (38.7% as against 21.1% of males) and depression (40.9% as against 38.9% of males). The MBBS 3^rd year students also showed most mental distress along with demographics like rural locality and hostelite status. Conclusion: The medical students suffer from anxiety and depression at an alarming rate with variation among genders and study years. The findings show that there is a need for routine psychological assessment, counseling services, and stress management programs in the medical institutes of Pakistan.