Factors Affecting Stress and Depression in Bangladeshi Students: A Cross-sectional Study

Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bangladeshi students had to deal with drastic changes. In-person education was suspended, and online education was introduced along with movement restrictions within the community. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of stress, depression, and their combination among Bangladeshi students and evaluate their association with demographic factors and media usage during the pandemic. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted online using a structured questionnaire between January 2021 and January 2022 on 1377 students by a convenience sampling method. Demographic factors along with media usage frequency were recorded. The Perceived Stress Scale-10 was used to assess stress. Depression was evaluated by the WHO-5 Well-Being Index. Results: The average age of the participants was 20.8 ± 3.1 years; 51.6% of them were male. The prevalence of high stress, depression, and a coexistence of high stress and depression (CHSD) was 24.8%, 49.5%, and 20.9%, respectively. These indices significantly increased in females and with increasing age groups of participants. Students with inferior self-perceived health had higher odds of suffering from stress and CHSD, whereas students with general/poor health had the highest odds of high media usage and to suffer from high stress, depression, and CHSD. Students with high stress were found to have 9.49 times and 27.9 times higher probability to suffer from depression than students with moderate and low stress, respectively. Conclusion: This study has identified some important factors that can act as possible indicators to evaluate the prognosis of mental health problems among Bangladeshi students during public health emergencies.