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Students and Depression: What Do They Know?

NADIATUL AZRA AHMAD MAZLAN1* and Chee Ming Chua1
  • 1 Faculty of Pharmacy, Mahsa University, Malaysia

Background Studies found young populations at the age of 16-24 years old undergo the supreme rate of acute and chronic suicide which is approximately 10-26%. Low to minimal level of mental health literacy and stigmatisation may lead to higher depression prevalence. This study aimed to evaluate MAHSA undergraduate pharmacy students’ knowledge on depression. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted using self-administered pre-validated questions. The questionnaire consists of knowledge on symptoms of depression, pharmacological and alternative medicine and source of information. Results There was a total of 183 respondents with two-third were aged 21 – 24 years old and 72.7% were females. Only 29.5% believed that they had at least 25% chances of suffering from depression. Majority of the students only able to identify three out of seven typical symptoms of depression stated by WHO that is “Being sad, down or miserable” (80.9%), “Thinking I’m worthless” (69.9%) and “Being unhappy or depressed” (69.4%). Highest number of respondents (74.3%) agreed that psychotherapy was effective in treating depression, with 48.1% believed in herbs and one-fifth believed in vitamins. More than 80% agreed that meditation will certainly help in treating depression. However, despite the increasing trends of suicidal act among students, slightly half of the students (51.9%) ever looked for information about depression and majority of them (74.7%) preferred to search through internet which may be related to uneasiness to discuss this topic in public. Conclusions In summary, moderate level of knowledge on depression was noticed among MAHSA undergraduate pharmacy students. Most believed that interpersonal disharmony will create life imbalance which may lead to depression. More than two thirds gave positive response to alternative treatment.

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Keywords: Pharmacy, MAHSA, Depression, knowledge, Students

Conference: International Conference on Drug Discovery and Translational Medicine 2018 (ICDDTM '18) “Seizing Opportunities and Addressing Challenges of Precision Medicine”, Putrajaya, Malaysia, 3 Dec - 5 Feb, 2019.

Presentation Type: Poster Presentation

Topic: Mental health

Citation: AHMAD MAZLAN N and Chua C (2019). Students and Depression: What Do They Know?. Front. Pharmacol. Conference Abstract: International Conference on Drug Discovery and Translational Medicine 2018 (ICDDTM '18) “Seizing Opportunities and Addressing Challenges of Precision Medicine”. doi: 10.3389/conf.fphar.2019.63.00003

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Received: 26 Oct 2018; Published Online: 17 Jan 2019.

* Correspondence: Dr. NADIATUL AZRA AHMAD MAZLAN, Faculty of Pharmacy, Mahsa University, Bandar Saujana Putra, Malaysia, AZRA@MAHSA.EDU.MY