Religiosity Was Associated With Lower Scores on Anxiety and Depression Symptoms in Medical Students During the COVID 19 Pandemic

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of anxiety symptoms in medical students is 63% and depression symptoms exceed 30.6%. The medical degree and the way academics work their training are known to generate stress and affect the health and performance of students. The religious apparatus can be a helpful tool to reduce these symptoms. To associate anxiety, depression and religiosity among medical students during home isolation period in the pandemic by COVID-19. METHODS: Students were randomly selected to complete a questionnaire with sociodemographic data, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Duke religiosity scale. The Kruskal-Wallys test was used to analyze the groups in independent samples and the Spearmam test was used to correlate the variables. RESULTS: 255 subjects were selected, 67.1% (171) female and 32.9% (84) male. Regarding the HADS scale, 57.3% (146) exceeded cut-off points for anxiety and 32% (82) and for depression. A higher prevalence of depression was found, with high statistical significance, in students of the clinical cycle (I suggest starting the sentence by the significant findings) and a p>0.05 value demonstrated the absence of difference in anxiety indices between course cycles. When correlating anxiety, depression and religiosity, there was a significant and inversely proportional relationship between anxiety and intrinsic religiosity. We also observed, with statistical significance, an inversely proportional correlation between organizational religiosity and depression among participants. CONCLUSIONS: There was an inversely proportional association between anxiety and intrinsic religiosity, as well as, between depression and organizational religiosity among medical students during the period of home isolation in the pandemic by COVID-19. The stressful event triggered by the pandemic favored the analysis of the aforementioned association with religiosity, whose protocol for defining risk or protection in longitudinal studies becomes a challenge due to the unlikely repetition of the severity of the time when the present study was conducted.