A survey on anxiety and depression level among South Indian medical students during the COVID 19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is being a global Heath crisis The rate of transmission of the disease is very high At this time there is no specific vaccine or treat-ment This widespread outbreak is also associated with psychological distress like depression and anxiety The effect of COVID 19 on medical students is considerable The medical students are in a transitory period which could be one of the most stressful times in a person’s life The aim of this study is to assess the mental health of South Indian medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic and to see if there is any influence of gender on mental health A cross sectional study was conducted using convenient sampling method A total of 359 responses were analysed Anxiety and depression symptoms were assessed based on four point Likert scale GAD-7 (General Anxiety Disorder-7) scale and CES-D (Center for Epidemiology Studies for Depression) scale is used to assess anxiety and depression symptoms with a small modification respectively Data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS statistics version 25 Out of 359 participants 50 4% of participants were male and 49 6% of them were females;majority of them (95 3%) were between the age group of 18-21 In total 75 5% and 74 6% of participants showed varying levels of anxiety and depression symptoms respectively Anxiety and depression symptoms are found to have a mild association with gender Symptoms are slightly higher among females than males