Gender Equality: Perception of Medical Students of SMC, Vijayawada, A P, India

“We recognize that gender equality and women’s empowerment are important for sustainable development and our common future. We reaffirm our commitments to ensure women’s equal rights, access and opportunities for participation and leadership in the economy, society and political decision making.We underscore that women have a vital role to play in achieving sustainable development. We recognize the leadership role of women, and we resolve to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment and to ensure their full and effective participation in sustainable development policies, programmes and decision-making at all levels.

The Demonstration, Encounter and Associations of Violent behaviours in Adolescents attending Educational institutions in a city of Southern India

Introduction:Violence is a major and growing public health problem across the world. It affects the general well-being, physical and mental health and social functioning of people. Violence by young people is one of the most visible forms of violence in the society and is a leading cause of death worldwide for people aged 15–44 years. This study was devised to estimate the prevalence of violent behaviours and the identify the factors associated with these behaviours in the adolescent students of Vijayawada.Material and Methods:A Cross sectional observational study was conducted from March 2015 to November 2017 on 621 adolescent students attending schools and colleges in Vijayawada. Institutions were selected through stratified random sampling. After obtaining permission from the Institutional Ethics Committee of Siddhartha Medical College, Vijayawada and the respective heads of the Institutions, a predesigned, pretested, structured questionnaire customised and adapted from the Youth Risk Behaviour Survey was used to collect data through individual interview by a single unbiased interviewer. Data obtained was analysed using SPSS v15.Results:15.8% (12.4% males, 3.4% females) carried a weapon with intention to injure someone over the last 12 months. 26.4% of the participants had carried a weapon with an intention to injure someone on school property over the last 12 months. 31.1% were involved in a physical fight while 23% had involved in a physical fight on school property. 17.6% participants had been threatened or injured with a weapon.17.4% adolescents felt unsafe at school or on the way to and from school. 12.2% had been bullied on school property, 10.3% had been electronically bullied. 83.8% had reported being exposed to verbal abuse on different forms of media and 86.5% had viewed physical fights, injuries or killings on various media.12.6% had sexual intercourse at-least once in their lifetime. 16.7% had been subjected to sexual violence while 7.6% had subjected someone to sexual violence.Conclusion:Adolescents have several types of violent behaviours, that are repetitive. Hence it is the need of the hour to establish systems for monitoring and surveillance of these traits

Cross-Sectional Study on Stress, Anxiety and Depression among Medical Undergraduate Students of Guntur Medical College, AP, India

Stress is a state of an individual that results from the interaction of the individual with the environment that is perceived as threatening to the well-being. It is an external constraint which upsets an individual both mentally and physically. Individual in a stressful situation is influenced by his or her mental ability to carry out ongoing tasks. Medical education is highly challenging and often places heavy demands on the mental health of the students. Compared to other fields of education; medical education is evidenced by high prevalence of stress. Educational process exerts an inadvertent negative effect on student’s mental health with a high frequency of depression, anxiety and stress among medical students. Students exposed to work overload and examinations in a competitive environment with constant pressure of assessment brings various changes in their daily habits such as lack of sleep and irregular diet. Mental morbidity is least accounted form of all population health studies and with the threatening rates of mental ill-health and rising rates of deaths due to the lack of early recognition of these morbidities, with not many Indian studies to document this burden. Therefore, the presence of depression, anxiety and stress among medical undergraduate students was assessed using a previously validated and standardized instrument, Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS 42) and the associations with their socio-demographic characteristics were identified. The objectives of the study were to assess the prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress among medical undergraduate students and to study the association of stress, anxiety and depression with the socio-demographic characteristics of medical under- graduate students