IMPACT OF SPORTS ACTIVITIES ON STRESS AMONG UNDERGRADUATE MEDICAL STUDENTS

Abstract

Introduction: Sports are voluntary or ordinary activities that individual participates in order to improve health and fitness or play as a hobby to utilize their leisure period. It is arranged either in organized or casual way or either played for the competition purpose. A higher percentage of mental health among athlete group was noted as compared to non-athlete group. According to many researches, a significant percentage of medical students are currently experiencing stress due to many circumstances that has been identified. The main highlighted source was academic load and this in turn also producing negative impact on their studies. Objective: The objective of this study is to determine the impact of sport activities on stress among medical students of Isra University Karachi Campus. Methodology: It was an observational-analytical study design. A total of 150 students were selected in this study through purposive sampling. The depression anxiety stress scale (42-item) was used to determine pre and post stress level among the participants. Data was collected before and after participating in sports from the students of MBBS, DPT, BS vision both male and female who had participated in the sports week. Students who got physically injured, not willing to participate and those withdraw themselves from sports nd were excluded. The pre and post data were then analyzed by paired t-test on SPSS version 22 . Results: The stress level among the students before participating in sports was reported mild (14.39) while after one week, the stress level showed significant reduction to 7.95 i.e. normal. The p-value was <0.01 that means the stress level decreased among the participants after participating in sports activities. Conclusion: The present study revealed positive impact of students engagement in sports on their stress level. Thus physical activity showed inverse relation with stress i.e. increasing physical activity was associated with decreasing stress levels.