Stress, stressors and psychological disturbances in undergraduate students at a dental college in Jammu and Kashmir: A cross-sectional study

Context: Stress is a “double-edged sword” that can either make or break an individual. Dental education is notorious for being stressful for its students causing various degrees of physical and emotional distress which can eventually lead to burnout. Aim: To identify the perceived sources of stress amongst a cohort of students performing clinical tasks in a college in the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir. Settings and Design: A descriptive cross-sectional quantitative study was designed for this purpose with a questionnaire which was distributed amongst BDS students. Materials and Methods: A five-point Likert Scale item modified dental environment stress (DES) questionnaire comprising of 44 questions pertaining to different stressor domains was administered to 185 students belonging to third year, fourth year and internship. Statistical Analysis Used: Responses were analyzed using two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Statistical significance was set at P value of less than 0.05. Results and Conclusion: Fear of failing a course was reported to be the most stressful by the students with insecurity concerning the professional future and patients not being available at prescribed times for treatment or examination following. Other stressors were most in the “moderately stressful” part of the spectrum. Financial responsibilities was surprisingly among the least stressful along with certain other stressors such as having children at home and marital/relationship adjustment problems. Conclusion: Most of the stressors identified mirror most of the national and international studies while some were found to be in contrast to the reports. An identification of these stressors amongst this cohort reestablishes the fact that it is high time that reforms were introduced into the present dental education methodology to help the students in coping with stress and to further optimize their output.