The psychological impact of the covid-19 lockdown on medical students of a college in north india

ABSTRACT

In response to COVID 19 spread Government of India imposed lockdown across the country to prevent the spread of virus and thus protecting the health of the community. This happened with restrictions to be at home and between the media hype of pandemic which may lead to a rise in the stress, anxiety, and depression among the community. Universities started online classes in between lockdown. Online classes would not solve the purpose of the students are not in a status to absorb the learnings and concepts. So before starting the online classes an online survey was done among the medical students to observe any distress and help them to come out of it to make online classes successful. An online questionnaire was made using the Impact of event scale-revised (IES-R) to assess the stress among medical students. The questionnaire was posted on the batch WhatsApp group of students across all semesters with a message showing the purpose of the study and how to approach the form. The decision of filling the form was kept completely on a volunteer basis. The response was received from a total of 331 medical students among them 130(39.3%) and 201(60.7%) were males and females respectively. The mean score was 21.60 still 38.95 students were prone to be victims of Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and there was no significant difference between males and females. Involvement with family was found to be inversely associated with stress, possible financial instability in the future, and uncertainty about the duration of MBBS and exams were positively associated with stress.