Behavioral and psychosocial predictors of depression in Bangladeshi medical students: a cross-sectional study

This cross-sectional study was conducted from July to November 2021, among students from four public medical colleges chosen at random from among 37 public medical colleges in Bangladesh. The sample size was determined based on a 95% confidence interval and a 5% sampling error. The needed sample size to estimate a true prevalence of depression was computed using \"Epitools\" (https://epitools.ausvet.com.au/prevalencess). Assuming the prevalence of depression among medical students of 39.1 and sensitivity 74 percent and specificity 91 percent for PHQ9, the estimated sample size was 838. We enrolled 840 medical students using two-step stratified random sampling from a total of 5000 medical students from selected medical colleges; 210 students from each of the medical colleges, and 42 students from each year were selected randomly from each year from first to fifth year. The pretested Bengali version of the questionnaire was translated and back-translated by two independent bilingual translators to check the consistencies avoiding response bias. The self-rated survey took approximately twenty minutes. Before implementing the survey, formal permission from the IRB as well as written consent from the participants were taken. After checking for inconsistencies and missing values, all 840 data were found to have completed the entire survey and were entered into the spss v-23 software for further analysis. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of depression among medical students at Public Medical Colleges as well as implicit depression predictors such as anxiety, perceived stress, internet addiction, Facebook addiction, sleep quality, sociodemographic and behavioral factors.