Psychological Stress and Stressors Among Clinical Dental Students at Shiraz School of Dentistry, Iran

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to assess the level of psychological stress and the perceived stressors among the undergraduate clinical dental students of Shiraz School of Dentistry. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was conducted during the second semester of the academic year 2018–2019 at Shiraz School of Dentistry, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The study group consisted of 150 dental clinical students. The participants were surveyed via the validated Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and the Dental Environment Stress (DES) questionnaires. One-way ANOVA, post hoc Tukey’s test, repeated measure ANOVA, Holm‐Sidak’s test, and t-test were performed to analyze the data after the normality of the data was checked by Kolmogorov–Smirnov test. The P values of less than 0.05 were considered as statistically significant. RESULTS: No significant differences were observed among the dental students with different academic levels in terms of depression and anxiety scores (P=0.057 and 0.154, respectively). The lowest and highest stress scores were observed among the sixth- and fifth-year students, respectively (P values <0.05). The scores of the stressors associated with the academic factors were significantly higher than those of the other domains (P<0.05) except for that of the clinical education domain (P=0.070). The females showed significantly higher DES scores (P values <0.05). CONCLUSION: The highest and lowest stress levels were observed among the fifth- and sixth-year students, respectively. The primary sources of stress were academic factors and clinical education. The females expressed higher levels of stress in certain areas of dental training.