Title
Impact of covid-19 on education, psychological wellness and life style of dental students in Saudi Arabia
Authors
Nishath Sayed Abdul1,*, Sarah Abdulmohsin Alarbash2, Zinab Hassan Albati2, Nouf Khalid Alkhelaiwi2, Walaa Qasim Alkhalifa2 & Mahesh Shenoy1
Affiliation
1Faculty of Oral Pathology, Department of OMFS and Diagnostic Sciences, College of Dentistry, Riyadh Elm University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; 2Dental Students, college of Dentistry, Riyadh Elm University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia;*Corresponding author
Nishath Sayed Abdul - E-mail: nishathsayed@riyadh.edu.sa
Sarah Abdulmohsin Alarbash- E-mail: Sarah.a.alarbash@student.riyadh.edu.sa
Zinab Hassan Albati- E-mail: zinab.h.albati@student.reu.sa
Nouf Khalid Alkhelaiwi- E-mail: nouf.kh.alkhelaiwi@student.reu.sa
Walaa Qasim Alkhalifa - E-mail: wala.g.alkhaifah@student.reu.sa
Mahesh Shenoy -E-mail: Mahesh.shenoy@riyadh.edu.sa
Article Type
Research Article
Date
Received May 2, 2022; Revised June 30, 2022; Accepted June 30, 2022, Published June 30, 2022
Abstract
The COVID-19 epidemic has had a significant impact on dental education, psychological health, and students' way of life worldwide. The new methods of teaching and learning had to be adapted by dental educational institutions. Due to lifestyle changes, COVID-19 had a major negative influence on students' mental health. Therefore, it is of interest to assess depression; anxiety and stress scale (DASS-21) levels experienced by dental students and compare them with gender and course of students. A cross-sectional survey based descriptive study was conducted among 356 undergraduate dental students, aged between 18-31 years, at Riyadh Elm University, Riyadh, kingdom of Saudi Arabia from January – March, 2022. A self-administered structured questionnaire written in English and Arabic language was given to all the willing participants. Four components of the questionnaire covered demographic information, the effect of COVID-19 on dental education, psychological health, and student lifestyle. In order to establish statistically significant variations across genders and student course levels regarding the effect of COVID-19 on dentistry education, the Chi-square test was used. Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare depression, anxiety, stress scales (DASS- 21) with variables such as gender and course level of students. Statistical significance was set at p-value <0.05.A total of 356 dental students were involved in this study with the total response rate of 92.2%.Majority of the respondents were males (56.2%) than females 156 (43.8), aged between 18-22 years (53.4%). Overall, moderate levels of the depression, anxiety and stress scores (DASS-21) were seen among 46.9%, 30.3% and 35.6% of the dental students, respectively. Thus, it can be concluded that COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on dentistry students' education, mental health, and way of life. More women and dentistry students on the clinical level felt the effects on their education. In order to implement psychological empowerment initiatives integrating institutional counseling services for students, the right steps should be done.
Keywords
COVID-19, dental education, psychological wellness, life style, Saudi Arabia
Citation
Sayed Abdul et al. Bioinformation 18(6): 588-595 (2022)
Edited by
P Kangueane
ISSN
0973-2063
Publisher
License
This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
