Features of Adaptation to Educational Stressin Russian-Speaking and Foreign First-Year Medical Students (Results of Comparative Transcultural Study)
Students who go to study in other countries and stay in them temporarily have difficulties both with adaptation to the norms and values of the host culture and educational stress, which may adversely affect health.Purpose. To develop recommendations in order to increase the level of adaptation to educational stress in foreign and Russian-speaking medical students on the base of verification of stress characteristics in the first year of study.Materials and methods. There was surveyed the continuous sample in the first month of study on the 1st course with the help of medical-sociological and psychometric methods. It consisted of 184 students: 100 - Russian-speaking, 84 - from the Middle East and India, who studied in English. Database processing was carried out with the methods of non-parametric statistics.Results. It was revealed that difficulties with adaptation in the first months of studying were more expressed in foreign students, which is connected both with the factors of educational stress and with the need to overcome the language barrier, adapt to the new social environment and food. The synergism of academic and migrational stress led to formation of suicidal thoughts in 44% of foreign students. In addition, they had the symptoms of social phobia more often. More than half of Russian-speaking students (55%) and 64.3% of foreign students communicated in social networks more than 3 hours a day to overcome stress, which creates a high risk of Internet addiction (on social networks). The symptoms of depression were found in 44% of Russian-speaking students and 51.2% of foreign students; anxiety - in 33% and 47.8%, respectively. Conclusion. Taking into account the high level of educational stress, which is accompanied by affective symptoms, there is required the development and implementation of a set of measures to reduce emotional stress, prevention of suicidal behavior, anxiety and depression. To adapt better to educational stress, it is advisable to conduct trainings on "time-management" and "stress- management" (at the beginning of studying).