Prevalence of depression among newcomer pharmacy students of Zanjan University of Medical Sciences correlating demographic parameters

Depression is a prevalent disease in students that has symptoms such as depressed mood, loss of interest and enjoyment, and increased fatigability. It also can complicate other medical conditions, and can even be serious enough to increases the chance of risky behaviors such as drug or alcohol addiction or lead to suicide. Present research aimed to study the prevalence of students depression based on demographic parameters. This descriptive cross-sectional study, using access sampling were selected 83 pharmacy students in Zanjan University of Medical Sciences during the year 2014. Data were collected using Beck depression questionnaire as well as the relevant demographic and analyzed by SPSS-18. the research results indicated that the prevalence of depression was 9.4%. Also results showed that there is significant difference in the prevalence of depression between native and non- native students (p<0.01). But didn’t observe significant difference in the prevalence of depression based on sex. In additive, there wasn’t significant relationship between education mean and depression. The results provide some evidence that living distance from family can affect the prevalence of depression in students. Therefore, in order to decrease the prevalence of students depression, it may be useful to consider regular psycho-training courses and native selection for student