Correlation between mental status and family dynamics among medical college students

Jing LI; Luchun GAN; Jinying LIU

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Mental disorders of college students, especially medical college students, deteriorate year by year.Mental disorders can not only restrict healthy development of body and mind, but also cause social crisis.

OBJECTIVE:

To survey the prevalence of mental status and the correlation between mental status and family dynamics among medical college students.

DESIGN:

Randomized cluster sampling.

SETTING:

Center of Mental Health, the First Affiliated Hospital, Chongqing University of Medical Science.

PARTICIPANTS:

A total of 801 sophomores were selected from a medical university of Chongqing from November 2004 to June 2005.

METHODS:

① Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) was used to evaluate mental status among college students. If those students whose total scores were ≥ 200 and/or the score of any factor in SCL-90 was ≥ 3, they were regarded as having mental problem. The higher the scores were, the severer the mental problemwas. ② Family dynamics questionnaires, including family atmosphere, individuation, systemic logic and disease opinion, were used to evaluate characteristics of family dynamics. There were 4 items family atmosphere, individuation, systemic logic and disease opinion. The more comfortable and cheerful the family atmosphere was, the lower the scores were; the greater the differentiated degrees were, the lower the scores of individuation were; the more objective the disposal of problems was,the lower the scores of systemic logic were; the more subjective the duty of recovery was, the lower the scores of disease opinion were.MAIN OUTCOME

MEASURES:

① Prevalence of mental disorder; ② comparing scores of family dynamics between disorder group and normal group; ③ results of correlation analysis and step regression analysis between mental disorder and family dynamics.

RESULTS:

Among 801 questionnaires, 747 were involved in the final analysis. ① Prevalence of mental problem was 19.4%. ② The scores of family atmosphere, Individuation, systemic logic and disease opinion were all higher in disorder group than those in normal group, with significant differences (3.10±0.49, 2.66±0.64; 2.92±0.54, 2.77±0.58; 2.79±0.55,2.69±0.54; 2.58±0.67, 2.36±0.62, P ＜ 0.05). ③ The total score of SCL-90 was positive correlation with points of family atmosphere and disease opinion (r=0,184, 0,156, P ＜ 0.05). Family atmosphere, individuation and disease opinion were analyzed by regression equation.C0NCLUSION Mental status of college students is closely related to family dynamics. Family atmosphere and disease opinion play a great role in mental disorder.