Professional environmental stress among dental and engineering students in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh, Central India: A comparative cross-sectional study

Background: Students undertaking professional courses such as medical, dental, and engineering are subjected to higher stress resulting in psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. This may be attributed to various factors such as academic, social events, health-related, and personal issues. Aim: This study aims to assess and compare professional environmental stress between dental and engineering students in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh. Methodology: A Modified Dental Environmental Stress Survey Questionnaire comprising 24 questions was pretested and administered among 316 students (115 dental and 201 engineering) to compare the professional environmental stress across stressor domains such as academic performance, faculty relations, personal issues, and professional identity. Descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test were applied using IBM Corporation SPSS version 23 program (New York, USA). P ≤ 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: Final year dental students reported higher stress than third year students with mean scores 34.91 ± 4.55 and 32.34 ± 5.36, respectively (P < 0.01). Final year engineering students experienced higher stress than third year students with mean scores 31.84 ± 4.29 and 29.86 ± 4.14, respectively (P < 0.01). Dental students reported higher stress than engineering students with mean scores 33.66 ± 5.10 and 30.78 ± 4.31, respectively (P < 0.01). Conclusion: This study gives the glimpse of factors creating stressful environment among the two science fields, the elimination of which will result in higher productivity and student-friendly environment for higher studies. The results were indicating that the intervention is necessary for psychological well-being of the students. Henceforth effective means of reducing stress should be explored together with determining emphatic methods of coping with the tensions.