A Comparison of Psychological Disorders among Medical and Nonmedical Students at Different Educational Levels

It seems that studying medicine is distinct from other academic disciplines in exerting more stress (environmental, emotional or physical), which is a unique characteristic of the medical field. This study aimed at a contrastive analysis of psychological disorders among medical and non-medical students at different educational levels. In this cause-comparison study, a total of 212 88-89 school-year medical students from Zanjan University of Medical Sciences were selected through census and evaluated by a SCL90 checklist and demographic questionnaire. Descriptive statistics (mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Kruskal-Wallis and U-Mann-Whitney) were used for data analysis. After analyzing the data by the SPSS software, results show that there are significant differences in all total indexes (GSI). Particularly, the small-scale test SCL90 (except the physical preparation, anxiety, and hostility, α>0.05), shows significant differences between the three groups of medical students, P<0.01 (except for phobia, α<0.05). Interestingly, the mental health scores of the students at higher levels show a considerable improvement. According to the results of our study, it does not appear that studying medicine, regarding its stressful nature, has a negative impact on the mental health of the students, because the results suggest that students at higher levels exhibit even a better mental health status.