Background: Medical assistants in particular are at a high risk of acquiring mental illnesses as postgraduate students. The purpose of this research was to characterize postgraduate students' quality of life and the prevalence of psychiatric and personality disorders.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 499 postgraduate students in 2019. Participants completed four questionnaires including demographic information questionnaire, the 36-item short-form 36-t-quality questionnaire (SF-36), the Millon 3 multi-axis clinical test (MCMI-III), the 53-item short-form short-term psychological symptoms questionnaire (BSI-53). One-way analysis of variance and statistical analysis was performed in SPSS software and causal structural model was performed in PLS software.
Results: The quality of life of students was moderate. In physical subcomponents, women's quality of life scores was higher than men, and conversely, in terms of psychological subcomponents, men's quality of life scores was higher than women. The causal structural model showed that income was a positive predictor of quality of life (B=0313, p<0.001), but female gender (B=-0.503, p<0.001) and age (B=-0.101, p<0.001) were negative predictors. About 30% of postgraduate students/residents suffer from psychological symptoms, and about 14% have overt mental disorders or personality disorders.
Conclusion: Gender, age, residency year, area of study, and income are individual traits of postgraduate students and residents that have a significant impact on quality of life, psychological symptoms, mental disorders, and personality disorders. The severity of mental symptoms and mental/personality illnesses is also influenced by quality of life.