Introduction- Stress affects an individual’s productivity and efficiency either by increasing or decreasing it. This varies because stress is handled in different ways among different people. Weak academic performance and high failure rate remains a persistent problem. Aim and Objectives- To assess the levels of stress among first-year medical students and appropriate stress relieving measures adopted by them. Materials and Methods- This study was an institution-based, cross-sectional study. Among 60 first-year MBBS students of RKDF medical college, Bhopal (M.P) who were willing to participate and gave consent to be part of this study. Result- 60 students participated in the study, among them 38 (64%) were males while 22 (36%) were females. Among 41 students who revealed stress, 24(58.5%) had poor performance in examinations as the cause. Health issues were major cause of stress in 28 students while home sickness was cause in 28 students.
Conclusion- Among first year students prevalence of stress was high and it was mainly related to academic problems. Gender had also influence in stress level of students so there is need of different kind of approach to each gender during intervention.
