Prevalence of mental disorders and problematic eating behavior among male and female medical students

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

This study investigates differences in the prevalence rates of psychological distress, dysfunctional eating attitudes as well as under- and over-weight between female and male medical students. The study sample consists of N = 141 second-year medical students (representing 76.6% of the whole student sample). Although female students exhibited higher symptom scores than males in nearly all variables, there were no significant differences in prevalence rates (based on gender-specific reference data) between female and male students. For females, the highest prevalence was in general psychological distress (39.5%), male students had highest prevalence rates in the domain of anxiety (45.3%). Depending on the specific subscale, between 16.1 and 22.9 percent of the female and 9.5 to 23.5 percent of the male students reported dysfunctional eating attitudes. Using restrictive criteria (underweight: BMI < 20), 30.6 percent of the female and 23.5 percent of the male students were underweight.

Details

Original languageGerman
Pages (from-to)137-149
Number of pages13
JournalZeitschrift für Psychiatrie, Psychologie und Psychotherapie
Volume52
Issue number2
Publication statusPublished - 2004
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-1491-9195/work/142256063

Keywords

Keywords

  • Disordered eating, Gender differences, Medical students, Prevalence, Psychological distress