Assessing suicidal ideation frequency in medical students

Education is a full stress experiment which can cause some physical and psychological effects, especially these may be intensified in medical sciences students; because it compound with stress of clinical fields. This study was done to determine frequency of suicidal ideation in nursing, midwifery and medical emergency students in Iranshahr province in Iran in 2010. This study was an analytic- descriptive; cross- sectional study. The samples were all 288 nursing; midwifery and medical emergency students in Iranshahr; who were enrolled in 2010. Data collection tools were demographic questionnaire and Beck’s standard scale of suicide ideation. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics such as Chi-square test, Fisher and Pearson correlation (α= 0.05) in SPSS16. Mean of suicidal ideation scores was 20.73(16.83). Suicide ideation was existed in 26.4 % of samples that 17% of them had suicidal thoughts and also 9.4% of them had susceptible for suicide. Suicidal ideation had significant relation with sex, grade of education and marital status (p<0.05) but it was not related with age, educational field and occupational status of students (p>0.05). It is necessary that guided consultation services and special trainings about healthy living and methods of dealing with stress plan for students. And if it is possible, experts would be invite to use kinds of psychological tests for screening in universities and schools. It would be diagnosed and treatment of mental disorders on time and that will prevent irretrievable damages in future in university students.