Depression is common among medical students, especially during their internship years, research claims.
A report published in the journal BMC Medical Education today also found that the depressive tendencies were higher in female students.
Researchers studied some 480 medical students at the ABC Regional Medical School near Sao Paulo, in Brazil, and used cluster analyses to describe the characteristics of depressive symptoms - affective, cognitive and somatic.
Affective symptoms represented the core symptoms of a depressive mood, based on students' reported levels of sadness, dissatisfaction, episodes of crying, irritability and social withdrawal, the report stated.
The cognitive cluster assessed pessimism, sense of failure or guilt, expectation of punishment, dislike of self, suicidal thoughts, indecisiveness and change in body image.
And the somatic cluster assessed the presence of slowness, insomnia, fatigue, loss of weight and loss of sexual interest.
'There was a high prevalence towards depressive symptoms among medical students, particularly females, mainly involving the somatic and affective clusters. Of the students in our study, 38 per cent had at least ten of a possible 63 symptoms of depression,' Sergio Baldassin, from the ABC Regional Medical School, said.
'Frequently pre-internship students fear they 'know nothing', and are insecure about the physical examination of other people.'
Today's report, however, found that having a parent who is a doctor reduced the risk of depression.
The authors conclude: 'The increased depression scores during the internship period of medical school are associated with a decrease in student health, and this is probably the period when professors and educators should try to be most aware of suicidal thoughts and risk in their students.'