Abstract
Background: Medical students are at high risk of developing depressive symptoms rather than their age-matched
group as medical education is stressful and medical students have psychological and academic stressors. The study
aimed to estimate the prevalence of depressive symptoms and the most important correlates associated with it
among Assiut University Medical Students in the academic year 2019–2020. It is a cross sectional study conducted
among 766 medical students at Assiut University in the academic year 2019–2020, screening for depressive symptoms
was by patient health questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9).
Results: The mean age of students was 21.27 ± 1.9, 55.5% of them have depressive symptoms. Female students had
statistically significantly higher percent of depressive symptoms compared with males (58.9% vs 51.2%), there was
statistically significant lower mean socio-economic score among students having depressive symptoms compared to
students with no depressive symptoms (5.73 ± 2.46 and 6.22 ± 2.5 respectively). Students having depressive symptoms
had higher mean scores of stresses. The multivariable regression revealed that younger age of the students
(OR = 0.797; p < 0.001), having a chronic disease (OR = 3.174; P = 0.024), lower life satisfaction score (OR = 0.908;
p < 0.001), students with higher medical stress score (OR = 3.596, P < 0.001), and high sense of control score
(OR = 2.323; p < 0.001) were the significant correlates of depressive symptoms among medical students.
Conclusions: Female gender, low socio-economic status, having chronic disease, presence of family history of either
mental illness or depressive symptoms, low satisfaction with life, higher total medical stressors, and low sense of control
were the most important correlates of depressive symptoms among medical students.