Prevalence of stress and its associated factors among medical students in Sabah, Malaysia Borneo
Open accessAbstract
Stress is accepted as the accumulation of unpleasant state of physical, mental and emotion on a person. Medical education has been known as one of the most stressful academic curriculum. Hence, medical students may subjected to multiple psychological changes and challenges throughout the years of medical education. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of stress and its associated factors among medical students. This cross sectional study was conducted from April to May 2018 in medical school in Sabah. It involved 396 medical students through universal sampling. Self-administered questionnaires were used as an instrument for data collection. The questionnaires included were Sociodemographic Questionnaire, Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales 21 (DASS-21) and Medical Student Stressors Questionnaire (MSSQ). Bivariate analysis (Chi Square test, Fisher’s Exact Test, Independent T test and Man-Whitney U test) were used to analyse the association. The response rate was 90.2%. The prevalence of stress among medical students were 33.3%. Significant associated factors include financial support inadequacy (p=0.010) and all categories of medical student stressors. The mean score of the academic related stressors was found to be at 2.117 (±0.758) which was the highest mean score among medical student stressors assessed by MSSQ. The result of this study can be used as a basis for implementation of preventive measures such as provision of comprehensive, integrated and responsive mental health care services in university-based settings.
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Studies conducted prior to COVID-19 demonstrated a higher prevalence of stress in undergraduates.
“Studies conducted prior to COVID-19 had demonstrated a higher prevalence of stress in this same group of undergraduates [8].”
From Relationships between psychopathology, psychological process variables, and sociodemographic variables and comparison of quarantined and non-quarantined groups of malaysian university students in the covid-19 pandemic (2021) · cites this paper as [8]
The Results (page not provided) report a 33.3% prevalence of stress among medical students surveyed in 2018, before COVID-19. The paper does not establish that this prevalence was higher than in the group meant by the citing sentence; no comparator for that claim is specified. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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- Authors
- Musiun, A., Lukman, K. A., Jeffree, M. S., Robinson, F., Hassan, M. R., Ghazi, H. F., Al-abed, A.-A. A. A., Tha, N. O., Swe, & Shamsudin, S. B.
- Affiliations
- Universiti of Malaysia Sabah (MY)
- National University of Malaysia (MY)
- Management and Science University (MY)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Malaysian Journal of Public Health Medicine
- Published
- 2019-04-01
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 116-125
- ISSN
- 1675-0306 (ISSN-L)
- 2590-3829
- OpenAlex
- W2972459000
- Cited by
- 16
- References
- 18
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 2.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc
- Locations
- Malaysian Journal of Public Health Medicine (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- UMS Institutional Repository (Universiti Malaysia Sabah) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Student Stress and Coping
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Innovations in Medical Education
- Keywords
- stress prevalence, medical students, student stressors, academic stress, mental health, DASS-21, Sabah
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