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Depression and anxiety among nursing students in Greece
Annals of General Psychiatry volume 7, Article number: S209 (2008)
Background
The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of depression and anxiety and the association between depression, anxiety and psychiatric symptoms among nursing students in Greece.
Materials and methods
A total of 170 students (first year 48, second 45, third 38 and fourth 39) agreed to participate in the study. Students completed the Greek versions of three instruments: the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-30), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI).
Results
Majority of the students (71.8%) perceived stress, most of them in mild levels (31.8%). About 12,4% reported very high levels of stress. The mean scores of state anxiety were 41, 45, 37.5 and 41, of trait anxiety 40.5, 41, 44, 42 and of depression 12, 13, 13, 9 for the four years respectively. Depressive symptoms were reported by 52,4% of the sample and high depressive symptoms by 4,7%. The average GHQ score was 5, 6, 5 and 4. The factor analysis of GHQ showed that “severe depression” and “somatic symptoms” were the primary and secondary factor causing stress. A positive relationship between anxiety, depression and mental stress was found.
Conclusions
It is usually observed that students undergo tremendous stress during various stages of their course. In our sample, year 2 and 3 nursing students indicated experiencing the highest degree of pressure from studies but the levels of anxiety and depression were not significantly different among the four years. Additional studies are needed to improve our understanding of the causes and consequences of nursing student stress.
References
Pryjmachuk S, Richards DA: Predicting stress in pre-registration nursing students. Br J Health Psychol. 2007, 12 (1): 125-44. 10.1348/135910706X98524.
Sawatzky JA: Understanding nursing students' stress: a proposed framework. Nurse Educ Today. 1998, 18 (2): 108-15. 10.1016/S0260-6917(98)80014-2.
Williams RA, Hagerty BM, Murphy-Weinberg V, Wan JY: Symptoms of depression among female nursing students. Arch Psychiatr Nurs. 1995, 9 (5): 269-78. 10.1016/S0883-9417(95)80046-8.
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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Papazisis, G., Vlasiadis, I., Papanikolaou, N. et al. Depression and anxiety among nursing students in Greece. Ann Gen Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 1), S209 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S209
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S209