DOI:
VOLUME-6, ISSUE-03
Hatam Boostani 1,
1 Faculty member of Psychiatry Group, Golestan Hospital, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz,, Iran
ABSTRACT
Dependence on the internet has been referred to as the modern addiction. In this work, the internet addiction status and the general health in the medical students is investigated. Also, the relation between the internet addiction and the general health is evaluated. Moreover, the relation of the prevalence of the internet addiction with the demographic factors is investigated. This study is done on the medical students in Ahvaz Jundishapur University of medical science in 2015. This is a cross-sectional descriptive analytic study was carried out on the 275 students of externship and internship Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences in 2015. In order to gather the information, the demographic questionnaire is used. By using the internet addiction test (IAT), the students were divided into three groups: ordinary users, slight addicted users and serve addicted users of internet. The general health questionnaire (GHQ) is used to compare these three groups. The SPSS software and t test is used to analyze the data and P<0.01 is significant. In this study, 220 individuals (80%) did not have internet addiction, 54 individuals (19.63%) had a slight internet addiction, and 1 individuals (0.36%) severe internet addiction was observed in the participants. there was seen a significant relationship between dependence on the internet and gender (P=0.006), marital status (P=0.001) and the age range (P=0.001). There actual level of the prevalence of internet addiction in Iran is unknown but based on our study was 20% in southwest of Iran. It seems that the level of internet addiction in Iran is higher than the global average. Studying in this area requires larger population samples.
Keywords: Internet Addiction, Medical Student, Southwest of Iran, Psychiatry