Te Role of Emotional Schemas in Anxiety and Depression among Russian Medical Students

Background. Academic success in a higher education institution requires the ability to process large amounts of information in a relatively short period of time, including having profciency at a high level of basic knowledge, and an ability to cope with stress. Continual study overload, a competitive environment, and ethical dilemmas (e.g. “How should I deal with human sufering?”, “How should I convey the diagnosis?”, “How should I tell someone that palliative treatment is the only option?”, “What if I make a mistake?”) can all result in anxiety and depression. Research has shown that students who showт signs of anxiety and depression may have maladaptive cognitive strategies for processing their emotional experiences. In the medical community, the rules concerning one’s own emotions are, on one hand, determined by specifc ethical standards (e.g., the idea that physicians should not show their emotions), and on the other, by the stressful situation itself, which requires taking responsibility for another person’s life. Te additional stress point is the need for constant study, which requires a pro-active attitude and learning more and more skills. A signifcant number of physicians tend to ignore their own emotional experiences, or suppress them. Te present study deals with indications of anxiety and depression on the basis of such emotional schemas, which we suggest play the key role in the development of emotional maladaptation in medical students. Objective. In this study we observe signs of anxiety and depression in medical students and their dependence upon the intensity of dysfunctional emotional schemas. Design. Te number of participants was 400, comprised of students from general medicine (n = 300) and dentistry (n = 100) at the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry. Methods. We took from the Symptom Check List-90-Revised (Russian version, N.V. Tarabrina N.V.) the subscales related to afective and anxiety disorders: anxiety, depression, interpersonal sensitivity, obsessive-compulsiveness, ...