The relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism among university medical students

BACKGROUND: Smartphone plays a vital role in higher education as it serves as a device with multiple functions. Smartphone addiction was reported on the rise among college and university students. The addiction may result in unwanted consequences on their academic performance and psychological healt...

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Autores principales: Lei, Leonard Yik-Chuan, Ismail, Muhd Al-Aarifin, Mohammad, Jamilah Al-Muhammady, Yusoff, Muhamad Saiful Bahri
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7488412/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32917268
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-00466-6
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author Lei, Leonard Yik-Chuan
Ismail, Muhd Al-Aarifin
Mohammad, Jamilah Al-Muhammady
Yusoff, Muhamad Saiful Bahri
author_facet Lei, Leonard Yik-Chuan
Ismail, Muhd Al-Aarifin
Mohammad, Jamilah Al-Muhammady
Yusoff, Muhamad Saiful Bahri
author_sort Lei, Leonard Yik-Chuan
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Smartphone plays a vital role in higher education as it serves as a device with multiple functions. Smartphone addiction was reported on the rise among college and university students. The addiction may result in unwanted consequences on their academic performance and psychological health. One factor that consistently relates to psychological distress and smartphone addiction is the neurotic personality trait. This study explored the relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological health and neuroticism among USM medical students. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was carried out on medical students in a public medical school. DASS-21, the neuroticism-subscale of USMaP-i and SAS-SV were administered to measure psychological distress, neuroticism, and smartphone addiction of the medical students. Spearman correlation was performed to examine the correlation between smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism. Simple linear regression was performed to investigate relationship factors of smartphone addiction. RESULTS: A total of 574 medical students participated in this study. The prevalence of smartphone addiction was 40.6%. It was higher among male (49.2%) compared to female (36.6%) medical students. The result showed a fair positive correlation between smartphone addiction and psychological health (rdepression = 0.277, p-value < 0.001; ranxiety = 0.312, p-value < 0.001; rstress = 0.329, p-value < 0.001). However, there was a poor positive correlation between smartphone addiction and neuroticism (r = 0.173, p-value < 0.001). The simple linear regression showed a significant increase in the levels of depression, anxiety, stress and neuroticism upon one unit increase in smartphone addiction (bdepression = 0.101, p-value < 0.001; banxiety = 0.120, p-value < 0.001; bstress = 0.132, p-value < 0.001; bneuroticism = 0.404, p-value < 0.05). These results indicated significant relationships between smartphone addiction, psychological health and neuroticism. CONCLUSION: This study suggested a high prevalence of smartphone addiction among medical students, particularly in male medical students. The smartphone addiction might lead to psychological problems and the most vulnerable group is the medical student with the neurotic personality trait.
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spelling pubmed-74884122020-09-16 The relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism among university medical students Lei, Leonard Yik-Chuan Ismail, Muhd Al-Aarifin Mohammad, Jamilah Al-Muhammady Yusoff, Muhamad Saiful Bahri BMC Psychol Research Article BACKGROUND: Smartphone plays a vital role in higher education as it serves as a device with multiple functions. Smartphone addiction was reported on the rise among college and university students. The addiction may result in unwanted consequences on their academic performance and psychological health. One factor that consistently relates to psychological distress and smartphone addiction is the neurotic personality trait. This study explored the relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological health and neuroticism among USM medical students. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was carried out on medical students in a public medical school. DASS-21, the neuroticism-subscale of USMaP-i and SAS-SV were administered to measure psychological distress, neuroticism, and smartphone addiction of the medical students. Spearman correlation was performed to examine the correlation between smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism. Simple linear regression was performed to investigate relationship factors of smartphone addiction. RESULTS: A total of 574 medical students participated in this study. The prevalence of smartphone addiction was 40.6%. It was higher among male (49.2%) compared to female (36.6%) medical students. The result showed a fair positive correlation between smartphone addiction and psychological health (rdepression = 0.277, p-value < 0.001; ranxiety = 0.312, p-value < 0.001; rstress = 0.329, p-value < 0.001). However, there was a poor positive correlation between smartphone addiction and neuroticism (r = 0.173, p-value < 0.001). The simple linear regression showed a significant increase in the levels of depression, anxiety, stress and neuroticism upon one unit increase in smartphone addiction (bdepression = 0.101, p-value < 0.001; banxiety = 0.120, p-value < 0.001; bstress = 0.132, p-value < 0.001; bneuroticism = 0.404, p-value < 0.05). These results indicated significant relationships between smartphone addiction, psychological health and neuroticism. CONCLUSION: This study suggested a high prevalence of smartphone addiction among medical students, particularly in male medical students. The smartphone addiction might lead to psychological problems and the most vulnerable group is the medical student with the neurotic personality trait. BioMed Central 2020-09-11 /pmc/articles/PMC7488412/ /pubmed/32917268 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-00466-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lei, Leonard Yik-Chuan
Ismail, Muhd Al-Aarifin
Mohammad, Jamilah Al-Muhammady
Yusoff, Muhamad Saiful Bahri
The relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism among university medical students
title The relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism among university medical students
title_full The relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism among university medical students
title_fullStr The relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism among university medical students
title_full_unstemmed The relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism among university medical students
title_short The relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism among university medical students
title_sort relationship of smartphone addiction with psychological distress and neuroticism among university medical students
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7488412/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32917268
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-00466-6
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