Chia Minn, Yeoh
(2015)
Psychological morbidities amongst house officers in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.
Masters thesis, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Psychological morbidities are common amongst healthcare
professionals. This includes junior house officers who are just transitioning from
being a medical student to a doctor. They undergo many stressors during this period
and hence might suffer from higher psychological morbidities such as depression
anxiety and stress.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to determine the prevalence of
psychological morbidities such as Depression, Anxiety and Stress and their coping
mechanisms in a population of house officers in Sarawak General Hospital, Kuching,
Sarawak. The socio-demographic factors were also evaluated.
METHOD: This is a cross-sectional study involving 227 house officers in Sarawak
General Hospital, Kuching, Sarawak over a period of 3 months. The sociodemographic
factors including age, sex, marital status, current posting, duration of
posting, place of graduate and state of origin were evaluated. The DASS (depression,
anxiety and stress scale) and CISS (coping inventory in stressful situations) were
completed to assess the psychological morbidities and their corresponding coping
mechanisms.
RESULTS: The overall prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress amongst house
officers in Sarawak General Hospital is high. The highest psychological morbidity
noted is anxiety, which is 50% of the population, followed by stress 43% and
depression 42%. There is no significant association between socio-demographic
factors such as gender, marital status and state of origin with depression, anxiety and
stress. However there is a significant association between local and foreign graduates
whereby foreign graduates show a higher prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress
(p<0.001). There is significant association between emotion oriented coping and
depression, anxiety and stress (p<0.001). There is also significant association between
task oriented coping and depression (p=0.04), distraction oriented coping and stress
(p=0.02) and social diversion oriented coping and depression (p=0.03)
CONCLUSION: There is a high prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress
amongst house officers in Kuching, Sarawak with no association to the sociodemographic
factors. However, there is a significant association between local and
foreign graduates with the prevalence of DASS and higher prevalence of DASS is
seen in emotion oriented coping.
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