Evaluation of anxiety and depressive symptoms among university of Abuja medical students

Anxiety and depression are highly prevalent psychiatric disorders across all age groups. Stressful environmental factors including harsh socio-economic, protracted academic calendars due to incessant school closures, and intensive academic engagement make incidence of these disorders to be on the increase among the youths and undergraduates of Nigerian universities. Medical training is known to be extra-intensive, often protracted, and stressful with University of Abuja not being an exception. But there has not been an evaluation of the prevalence of anxiety and depression among the medical students of the university, to the best of knowledge. The primary aim of this study, therefore, is to determine the prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms among these students. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 112 University of Abuja medical students using a hardcopy questionnaire derived from the Hamilton anxiety rating scale (HAM-A) and Hamilton depression rating scale (HAM-D). Our findings indicate the study participants aged from 15 to 28 years old with about 63% of them being 25 – 28 years of age. More of the participants were female, Christian by faith, and of the minority Nigerian ethnicities. More than half of the responders were urban dwellers; have less than 5 siblings and overwhelming majority (87.50%) came from unbroken families. Overall, 33 (29.46%) and 36 (32.14%) of sample population exhibited anxiety and depressive symptoms, respectively. Anxiety evaluation indicates 28 (25%) of the responders scored for mild anxiety while 5 (4.46%) scored for moderate to severe anxiety. Of 33 persons exhibiting anxiety, 13 (39.39%) were male and 20 (60.60%) were females, with 2 males and 3 females exhibiting moderate to severe anxiety. The most frequently cited individual anxiety symptoms by the participants are as follows: worry (combined) 19%, insomnia 19%, and palpitations17%. More than half (21) of the 36 persons who exhibited depression exhibited mild, 10 (27.78%) moderate, and 5 (13.89%) exhibited severe depressive symptoms. 20 (55.55%) of the 36 total depression scores were female with 4 of these and only 1 male scoring for severe depression.   severe worry. The most frequent depression symptoms in the survey were inability to focus (distractibility) (24%), lonely feeling (22%), anger (combined) (15%), and sorrowfulness (11%). Fifty-five (55) participants (49.12%) indicated their anxiety and depressive symptoms have impacted negatively on their studies and nineteen (19) (!7%) indicated they had had to use psychoactive substances such as alcohol, coffee, and energy drinks to get relief from their symptoms. The survey shows the prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms is high among University of Abuja medical students. Governments, University managements, families and students alike need to take proactive steps to mitigate the immediate and long-term effects of these disorders.