Evaluation of Dental Students’ Stress, Depression, and Anxiety in Different Educational Departments and the Related Factors

Aim: Dentistry is a stressful profession, and dental students are susceptible to different forms of stress and psychological pressures. Investigating the amount of this stress and knowing the sources that cause it, can help in creating a supportive and stress-reducing educational environment. Methods: Fifty-nine senior dental students of Tehran Faculty of Dentistry participated in this cross-sectional descriptive study. The data was collected by DASS-21 questionnaire using a 4-scale measure. The total stress scores of the students were calculated at the clinical departments of the Dental School. The severity of depression, anxiety, and stress was calculated for the students. The comparison of the total stress scores at different departments was made by ANOVA, and the effect of demographic factors on predicting the stress scores was determined by linear regression analysis P-values 0.05 were considered as significant. Results: Among the total participants, 72.9% (n=43) showed different levels of depression; 57.7% (n=34) had different levels of anxiety and 64.3% (n=38) exhibited different levels of stress. The total stress scores of the students were mostly reported in the endodontics (12.59, P 0.05 and oral medicine (9.2, P 0.05) departments, while the least total scores were found in the orthodontics (3.89, P 0.05) and oral and maxillofacial surgery (4.25, P 0.05) departments. Conclusion: The senior dental students in Tehran University of Medical Sciences have high levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. The highest levels of stress were related to the departments of endodontics and oral medicine among the educational departments. It appears that dental students living away from their families and the students whose mothers have high educational levels require further support in this respect.