¿Dios mío, por qué me has abandonado? Estrés, ansiedad, depresión y afrontamiento religioso en los estudiantes de Medicina

Background

Medical students present with elevated levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Religious coping is an avenue for understanding and coping with negative life events that are related to the sacred. There are several studies of association between religious coping and levels of stress, anxiety and depression. The aim of the study was to determine the influence of religious coping on stress, anxiety and depression in medical students of the Universidad Andina del Cusco.

Methods

Analytical cross-sectional study in 317 medical students of the Universidad Andina del Cusco. The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) was used to measure stressful states and the Abbreviated Religious Coping Scale (Brief RCOPE) to determine levels of positive and negative religious coping. For the expression of the results, prevalence and frequencies, Spearman's correlation and chi-square, p-value and 95% CI were calculated. All medical students who gave their informed consent and who regularly attended the 2020-I academic year were included.

Results

Of the participants, 51.5% were female. Mean age was 21.31 years. The 66.2% obtained scores of depression-moderate, severe or extremely-severe, 70.9% obtained scores of anxiety-moderate, severe or extremely-severe and 42.3% presented stress-moderate, severe or extremely-severe. Negative religious coping had a highly significant positive relationship with stress, anxiety and depression.

Interpretation

Negative religious coping was significantly (< 0.001) and positively associated with stress (0.252), anxiety (0.304) and depression (0.357), with high power (> 0.5). The study has clinical and public health implications.