Prevalence of psychological distress and disordered eating in female and male medical students

Abstract

This study investigates differences in the prevalence rates of psychological distress, dysfunctional eating attitudes as well as under- and overweight 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.