Anxiety disorder among undergraduate medical students of a rural tertiary care hospital of Gujarat, India due to Coronavirus Disease-19 pandemic lockdown

Abstract

Context: Mental wellbeing is of utmost importance in the 21st century but the coronavirus pandemic and simultaneous lockdown have brought uncertainty, fear among other issues disturbing the normal equilibrium and leading to disharmony in the mental wellbeing of university-going students. Aim: Find out prevalence and risk factors of anxiety disorder among undergraduate medical students of sbks medical institute and research center because of lockdown. Materials and Methods: It was a cross-sectional study. Participants were sent a preformed questionnaire that included a GAD-7 scale along with risk factors and socio-demographic questions via college social media groups. Simple random sampling method was used to select students. Results: Out of the 301 responses analysed, results showed 11.63% were screened to be experiencing severe anxiety, 19.27% moderate anxiety, 29.57% mild anxiety. Disturbance in academic study schedule (odds ratio [OR] = 8.461, 95% confidence interval [CI] (4.159,17.212), P < 0.001), inability of the participants to go outside as a routine (OR = 2.837, 95% CI (1.701,4.734), P < 0.001), inability to perform extracurricular activities (OR = 2.017, 95% CI (1.223, 3.328), P = 0.006) and the lack of offline/On-campus experience were significant factors leading to increased anxiety for the students (OR = 4.185, 95% CI (2.494, 7.022), P < 0.001). Conclusions: 30.90% of the participants tested positive for anxiety disorder and disturbance in academic study schedule, lack of offline/on-campus experience, and inability to perform extracurricular activities were significant factors affecting anxiety levels of students.