Health professions’ students have an alarming prevalence of depressive symptoms: exploration of the associated factors

Contains fulltext : 172650.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: There is a need to better understand the depression phenomenon and to clarify why some students become depressed and others don't. The purpose of this study was to compare the prevalence of depressive symptoms among health professions' (HP) students, and to explore the association between socio-demographic factors (e.g. year of study, discipline, gender) and depressive symptoms. METHODS: In this descriptive-analytic, cross-sectional study, stratified proportionate sampling strategy was used to select the study sample during the academic year 2012-2013. The students from four health professions' schools situated within a large, public university located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia were screened for depressive symptoms using the 21-item Beck Depression Inventory (BDI II). Chi-square test, student t-test and ANOVA were used to compare different categorical variables. RESULTS: The overall response rate was 79.0 %, the highest among dental students 86.1 %, and lowest among nursing (49.7 %). The overall prevalence rate of depressive symptoms was 47.0 %; it was highest among dentistry students (51.6 %), followed by medicine (46.2 %), applied medical sciences (AMS) (45.7 %) and lowest among nursing students (44.2 %). A statistically significant association was found between the presence and severity of depressive symptoms on one hand and the female gender (p = 0.000) and year of study on the other hand. CONCLUSION: This study seems to indicate an alarming rate of depressive symptoms. Female gender, dentistry, the third year for all schools and fifth year for medicine and dentistry have the highest association with depressive symptoms. Future studies may be needed to explore further the reasons and explanations for the variation in the prevalence of depressive symptoms among these groups. The factors that deserve exploration include curricular variables and personal factors such as the students' study skills

1D NMR Analysis of a Quaternary MEA–DEAB–CO₂–H₂O Amine System: Liquid Phase Speciation and Vapor–Liquid Equilibria at CO₂ Absorption and Solvent Regeneration Conditions

New procedures were developed for our recently developed 1D NMR calibration method for quantitative liquid phase speciation analysis of a complex quaternary CO₂ loaded blended amine solution such as MEA–DEAB–CO₂–H₂O at high and low temperatures respectively representing CO₂ stripping and absorption conditions. The ion speciation analyses were performed in conjunction with the corresponding vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) of the system to enable the estimation of possible CO₂ capture performance. Accurate speciations were performed for a quaternary amine system using four concentrations consisting of 5.0 M MEA blended with 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 1.25 M DEAB solutions with different CO₂ loadings at 24 °C, and for the first time, at higher temperatures using only the NMR calibration method. By comparison, the NMR calibration method with the new procedures was shown to be valid and perhaps the only approach for determining ion speciation for quaternary amine solutions at higher temperatures

¹³C NMR Spectroscopy of a Novel Amine Species in the DEAB–CO₂–H₂O system: VLE Model

In the present work, ion speciation studies in solutions of the novel amine 4-(diethylamine)-2-butanol (DEAB), at various CO₂ loadings (0–0.8 mol of CO₂/mol of amine) and amine concentrations (0.52–1.97 M), were determined by ¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. In addition, the dissociation constant <i>K</i> of DEABH⁺ was determined at 24.5, 35, and 45 °C using a pH meter. The ion speciation plot, which contains various sets of concentrations of DEAB, protonated DEAB, bicarbonate, and carbonate, was successfully generated. Because DEAB is a novel solvent, this is the first time that the ion speciation plots of the DEAB–CO₂–H₂O system have been developed. It is also the first time that the ¹³C NMR calibration technique was applied to develop the vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) model for an amine–CO₂–H₂O system. The results obtained from the present work can be a great help for the further analysis of the DEAB VLE model, as well as CO₂ absorption and kinetics studies. Furthermore, it was found that the novel ¹³C NMR calibration technique developed in this work provides higher accuracy than the conventional technique