Severity of Nomophobia and its Association with Anxiety, Stress and Depression among Medical Students during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Abstract

Objective

Nomophobia is a psychological condition associated with fear of being detached from mobile phone connectivity.The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lockdowns and closure of educational institutions.The study’s objective is to find the severity of nomophobia and its association with stress, anxiety and depression in medical students in a tertiary care medical college hospital.

Materials and Methods

This is a cross-sectional analytical study. 307 students were included in the study by simple random sampling. A questionnaire as a google form was administered, which contained four parts. This included socio-demographic details, details related to mobile phone use, a pre-validated questionnaire called Nomophobia questionnaire and the DASS-21 scale.

Results

In our study, we found most students (45.0%) spent 3-6 hours daily on an average on mobile phone use.The most common use was online streaming of movies (24.8%) followed by social networking (23.1%). Statistical analysis revealed that 100 % of students had some degree of nomophobia. Severe nomophobia was present in 19.2% of the students. The severity of nomophobia was associated with the daily duration of mobile phone use, the amount spent on mobile recharge and self-perception of having a mobile phone dependence. There was a strong association between the severity of nomophobia and the severity of stress, anxiety, and depression.

Conclusion

This study has found that a significant percentage of students suffer from nomophobia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Future studies to explore the associations and other causative factors for nomophobia would help in devising intervention methods to decrease the impact of this neglected social health problem.