A study to compare the mental health status and psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on male and female undergraduate medical students

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical students and health-care professionals faced significant challenges, which had a negative impact on their mental health. Aims: This study aimed to assess the mental health of male and female undergraduate medical students and the psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants and the Methodologies: After receiving institutional ethical clearance and the informed consent of the participants, this study was carried out on 591 medical students from a peripheral medical college in West Bengal during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. At intervals of 6 months, two surveys were conducted. The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 and Impact of Event Scale–Revised scale scores were evaluated in the Google Forms surveys. Using the t-test and the Chi-square test, the parameters of the two groups of students were compared. Results: On the initial assessment, neither group received a score that was significantly different from the other. Female students had significantly higher anxiety scores than male students on the second assessment. During the second pandemic wave, there was a significant gender difference in anxiety and stress levels (P = 0.001), with females experiencing higher levels of anxiety and stress. Conclusions: During the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, female undergraduate medical students had higher stress and anxiety levels than their male counterparts, according to the current study. Therefore, it is possible to draw the conclusion that the spread of the pandemic had a greater negative impact on the mental health of female undergraduate students

Nickel (II) and copper (II) complexes of tetradentate unsymmetrical Schiff base ligands: first evidence of positional isomerism in such system

The 1:1 condensation of 2,4-pentanedione and 1,2-diaminopropane gives a mixture two positional isomers of tridentate mono-condensed product 7-amino-4-methyl-5-aza-3-octene-2-one (HAMAO) and 7-amino-4,6-dimethyl-5-aza-3-heptene-2-one (HADAH) that reacted readily with Ni(II) thiocyanate to yield exclusively a single product, [Ni(AMAO)NCS] (1) in which the methyl substituent of diamine is ‘remote’ from the imino nitrogen. The mixture of terdentate ligands has been used for further condensation with pyridine-2-carboxaldehyde or 2-acetylpyridine to obtain the unsymmetrical tetradentate Schiff base ligands. The tetradentate ligands formed by the condensation of it and pyridine-2-carboxaldehyde readily yielded complexes with Cu(II) and Ni(II) (2 and 3, respectively). Crystal structure analysis shows that in 2 the condensation site of the diamine with 2,4-pentanedione is the same as in 1 but that in 3 is different (the methyl group of the diamine is located in the vicinity of 2,4-pentanedione), i.e. the tetradentate ligand is in two different isomeric forms in complexes 2 and 3. Another tetradentate ligand, obtained by the condensation of the tridentate ligands and 2-acetylpyridine yielded a Ni(II) complex (4) where the methyl group is in the vicinity of 2,4-pentanedione as in 3. The isomerization in the Ni(II) complexes has been studied by NMR spectroscopy