They suffer from anxiety, depression, and some even think about suicide. The mental health of medical students is deteriorating according to a study conducted among more than 11,000 young people by three student unions ISNI, ISNAR-IMG and ANEMF, unveiled on Wednesday. The Covid epidemic could partly explain this worsening of the morale of young future doctors.
“75% of young and future doctors show anxiety symptoms”, according to the study of 11,754 undergraduate medical students, externs and interns. In a previous study in 2017, 62% described anxiety symptoms. In addition, 39% of them present with depressive symptoms (compared to 27.7% in 2017). Only figure down: 19.9% of respondents said they had suicidal thoughts, compared to 23.7% in 2017. Other figures revealed by this study: in 2021, 67% of externs and interns experience a syndrome professional exhaustion, or burnout, and 39% of undergraduate students.
Students victims of sexual assault in health institutions
In addition, a quarter of respondents say they have been victims of sexual humiliation or harassment, and sometimes even sexual assault. “This violence was inflicted in the hospital for the vast majority of them by thesis doctors”, specifies the report.
Lexicometric analysis of the answers to the open question “Would you like to add anything?” at the end of the questionnaire finally allows us to distinguish “three groups of difficulties related to the psychological health of medical students and interns” : study and working conditions (64.2% of the text corpus) “overwhelmingly”, consequent psychopathological disorders (26% of the text corpus) and the gender-based and sexual violence suffered (8.8% of the text corpus).