RESEARCH ARTICLE
Illness Anxiety Disorder and Distress among Female Medical and Nursing Students
Sana Hawamdeh1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2023Volume: 19
E-location ID: e17450179277976
Publisher ID: e17450179277976
DOI: 10.2174/0117450179277976231115070100
Article History:
Received Date: 18/08/2023Revision Received Date: 25/09/2023
Acceptance Date: 12/10/2023
Electronic publication date: 20/12/2023
Collection year: 2023
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Objective:
This study aims to compare the prevalence of illness anxiety disorder (IAD) and distress between medical and nursing students and examine their associations with students' characteristics.
Methods:
Cross-sectional data were collected using the Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI, for measuring IAD) and the Medical Students' Disease (MSD) Perception and Distress Scales.
Results:
Two hundred and sixteen Medical students and 250 Nursing students were recruited from a public female university in Saudi Arabia. Their mean age was 21.27 years. The findings showed that the overall prevalence of IAD (SHAI scores ≥18) among the total sample was 38.8%, with a significantly lower prevalence in medical students compared to the prevalence in nursing students (57.2% vs 17.6%, respectively, X2=45.26, p<.001). Nursing students had significantly higher SHAI scores and lower MSD Perception scores than medical college students, but there were no significant differences among them in the MSD Distress scale. Significant differences in the main study variables scores were reported among nursing students but not among medical students, with the fourth-year level nursing students having higher SHAI and lower MSD Perception and perception scores than other nursing students.
Conclusion:
The highlights that medical and nursing students are susceptible to developing anxiety-related disorders and distress that may have negative impacts on their academic achievements and future careers. Both nursing and medical faculty should help in identifying strategies to support the students' mental health and well-being.