Assessment of depressive and anxious symptoms in medical students in social isolation during the sars-cov-2 pandemic

Introduction: Social isolation has been a major contributor to the worsening mental health of medical students. Objective: toevaluate the mental health of students during the pandemic. Materials and methods: an online questionnaire was applied to assess sociodemographic data, habits, anxiolytic and antidepressant medications, and depressive and anxious symptoms from the Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD). Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality tests will be performed for numerical variables, as will the chi-square test for categorical variables and ANOVA for numerical variables. A p value of up to 0.05 was considered significant. Results: 573 students answered the questionnaire, being 391 (68.2%) female, with a mean age of 23.7 years, the majority living in Ceará and doing predominantly the 6th and 7th semester of the medical course. Discussion: There were no significant changes for the majority in relation to alcohol use, tobacco use, use of psychoactive drugs and levels of anxiety and depression while in isolation, however changes in sleep quality and changes in the level of physical activity were noted and, therefore, should be targets to be worked on in this population for better promotion of their mental health.