ABSTRACT
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, alpha >0.05], shows significant differences between the three groups of medical students, P<0.01 [except for phobia, alpha <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