Functional Dyspepsia (FD); Prevalence and Relationship with Psychological Disorders among Medical Sciences Students

The educational environment of medical sciences creates multiple stressful situations; also, psychological disorders are one of causes that are considered for FD. Therefore, this study conducted to investigate the prevalence and relationship of FD with psychological disorders among medical sciences students. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 630 medical sciences students in 2015. Selected participants were evaluated for FD by a general practitioner according to ROME III criteria, and psychological disorders of students were evaluated by a clinical psychologist by using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). Out of all participants, 120 (20%) participants suffered from FD. There was no significant difference between the two different groups on variables such as age (p=0.546), sex (p=0.751), marital status (p=0.878), residence (p=0.113), GPA (p=0.080), and years of education (p=0.463) as far as FD was concerned. But, there was a significant difference between the different fields on frequency of FD (p=0.012). Participants with FD had significantly higher frequencies of general mental disorder (p= 0.017), somatic symptoms (p= 0.017), anxiety (p= 0.000), social dysfunction (p= 0.003) and depression (p= 0.007). The prevalence of FD among students was above the average prevalence in general population; these results might be due to the youngness of our study population and high frequency of psychological stress in medical training environments. Also, frequency of psychological disorders in FD patients was notably higher than healthy individuals.