[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0266686.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Depression and stress regarding future career among university students during COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Upama Chowdhury
  • Md Ahosan Habib Suvro
  • Syed M D Farhan
  • Md Jamal Uddin
Abstract
Introduction: Students generally struggle to build a good career after their graduation in developing countries like Bangladesh. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such struggle increased and faced with stress and depression. We aimed to inquire about the amplitude of depression and stress among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding their future careers and to identify the factors associated with this depression and stress. Methods: A total of 516 students at various universities participated in this cross-sectional survey. From October 2020 to February 2021, data was collected through an online survey. An e-questionnaire with socio-demographic, Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) questions was created using Google Forms and distributed via Facebook, WhatsApp, and other social media platforms. The universities included into the sample were selected randomly from eight divisions of Bangladesh. Descriptive statistics and Pearson chi-square tests were carried out and the association between the risk factors and the outcome (e.g. depression and stress) was assessed by the odds ratio (OR) including 95% confidence interval (CI) obtained from the binary logistic regression model. Results: Among 516 participants, 380 (73.6%) were male and 136 (26.4%) were female. Around 414 (80.2%) participants had mild to severe depression and 399 (77.3%) reported having low to moderately perceived stress. Female students were 2.1 (95% CI: 1.21–3.76) times more depressed and 3.6 (95% CI: 1.87–6.76) times more stressed than the counterpart. Students, who think delaying graduation due to COVID-19 will reduce the chance of getting a job, were 1.72 (95% CI: 1.07–2.76) times more depressed. Respondents, whose department offers any internship were 36% less depressed (p = 0.053), while skilled students were 46% less stressed though it was not statistically significant (p = 0.43). Conclusion: According to our findings, there is an increasing prevalence of depression and stress among students, particularly among female students and those who do not receive job-related facilities from their institutions or who are unskilled. Universities can provide mental health programs and strive to have enough space for students to participate in internships. In addition, the government and educational institutions should work together to address the growing challenge.

Suggested Citation

  • Upama Chowdhury & Md Ahosan Habib Suvro & Syed M D Farhan & Md Jamal Uddin, 2022. "Depression and stress regarding future career among university students during COVID-19 pandemic," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(4), pages 1-14, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0266686
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266686
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0266686
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0266686&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0266686?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peter JO Aloka, 2023. "Effect of Gender on Stressful Experiences of First Year Students. An inside from a public university in Kenya," Academicus International Scientific Journal, Entrepreneurship Training Center Albania, issue 28, pages 75-88, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0266686. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.