Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression in Medical Students and in Humanities Students: Relationship with Big-five Personality Dimensions and Vulnerability to Stress

Aims: To evaluate the prevalence of anxiety and depression in medical students and in humanities students. To assess the relationship between symptoms of anxiety, symptoms of depression and Big-Five personality dimensions and vulnerability to stress in medical students.

Methods: Randomly selected 338 medical students and 73 humanities students were evaluated for symptoms of anxiety and depression using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), for Big-Five personality dimensions using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), and for vulnerability to stress using the Stress Vulnerability Scale (SVS).

Results: Symptoms of anxiety and symptoms of depression were prevalent in medical students (43% and 14%, respectively) and in humanities students (52% and 12%, respectively). In medical students the score on the HADS anxiety subscale and the score on the HADS depression subscale correlated negatively with the score on the TIPI Emotional Stability scale (r = -0.39, p < 0.01 and r = -0.2, p < 0.01, respectively) and correlated positively with the score on the SVS (r = 0.38, p < 0.01 and r = 0.44, p < 0.01, respectively).

Conclusions: Symptoms of anxiety and depression are prevalent in medical students and in humanities students. Severity of symptoms of anxiety and symptoms of depression in medical students is negatively related to emotional stability and positively related to stress vulnerability.