Coping Styles and its Association with Sources of Stress in Undergraduate Medical Students

CONTEXT: The two ubiquitous factors that have been identified in medical courses to underlie mental health are stress and different coping styles adopted to combat stress. AIM: To find the association between coping styles and stress in undergraduate medical students. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: A medical college in Central Kerala. A cross-sectional study design was adopted. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Source and Severity of Stress Scale, Medical Student Version, was used to assess the source and nature of stress. Brief Cope was used to find out the coping styles adopted. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: The statistical analysis was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20 and SAS. Chi-square analysis was used to find the association between coping styles and stress domains and with the overall stress score. RESULTS: There is a significant positive association between overall stress score and coping styles (P=0.001) of ‘Negative cope’, ‘Blame’, and ‘Humor’. ‘Positive cope‘ and ‘Religion’ has significant positive association with ‘Academics’ (P=0.047) and 'self Expectations’ (P=0.009). ‘Blame’ (P<0.001) has very high significant positive association with ‘Academics’, 'self expectation’, and ‘Relationships’. Very high significant positive association is further found between ‘Humor’ (P<0.001) and 'self expectations’, ‘Living conditions’, and ‘Health and Value conflict’. ‘substance Use’ is positively associated in high significance to ‘Health and Value conflict’ (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The outcome of the study emphasizes the need for stress management techniques in the medical school.