Dental Student Mental Health
By: Austin Yan
Background
Recently, there has been interest in analyzing optimal survey instruments used to assess stress, burnout, depression, and anxiety among U.S pharmacy students (Lee et al., 2024). Though the research was focused primarily on pharmacy education, the review’s findings and tools can potentially be applied for dental programs facing similar mental health challenges among their students.
Overlap Between Pharmacy and Dental Students
Today, many of the pressures that pharmacy students face overlap with dental students: academic rigor, high-stake exams, clinical obligations, and financial debt. During the second and third years, the stressors are especially exacerbated, as coursework becomes more demanding and clinical experiences intensify. Components of mental health, including anxiety, burnout, and depression have been well-documented in both populations, but there has not been an implemented strategy towards tracking and supporting wellness, specifically in dental students.
Validated Tools and Applications to Dentistry
Currently, the most used and validated instruments to track wellness in pharmacy students are:
Perceived Stress Scale (PSS)
Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)
Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)
Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7)
These tools can be applied to dental students since they align with the requirements set by academic institutions, such as ease of use, low cost, strong reliability, and relevance to student support services. For instance, the PSS-10 survey has been used repeatedly to measure longitudinal stress trends in different populations of health students, meaning it can be applied in dental programs to examine the impact of wellness initiatives over time.
For the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 instruments, they are already standard in clinical settings to screen for depression and anxiety, respectively. Incorporating both tests into mental health checks can help identify students struggling mentally early, especially during high-stress periods like board exams or clinic transitions.
The MBI exam is considered the gold standard for measuring burnout, but its high cost is a limiting factor. This leaves alternatives like the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) on the table, as they are nearly free and have shown similar effectiveness in assessing student emotional exhaustion and disengagement.
Implementation
The literature also highlights how effective, non-pharmacologic interventions, such as wellness sessions, in-class breaks, and course schedule revisions, have decreased self-reported stress and increased student engagement. Although the quantitative stress scores did not significantly change, students responded positively to changes that focused on mental health.
In addition, students who relied on health coping mechanisms like exercise, social connection, and structured time management, reported lower stress. These behaviors can be reinforced through peer-led wellness groups, accessible fitness programs, or embedded reflection sessions in the curriculum.
Implications for Dental Education
The main takeaway from the literature is that validated tools already exist to examine and monitor dental student mental health. Implementation would not require developing new instruments but rather adapting them through existing methods. Dental schools can use these instruments to track well-being over time, evaluate how intervention effectiveness, and identify high-risk periods within the academic cycle.
Considering how dental students are reported to undergo high rates of distress, integrating routine mental health assessments via the PSS, PHQ-9, and GAD-7 offers a proactive step towards a more supportive educational environment. Evidence-based strategies from related disciplines like pharmacy provide a strong foundation to begin this work.
Citations
Lee, K. C., Yan, A., Cat, T. B., & El-Ibiary, S. Y. (2024). A Review of Survey Instruments and Pharmacy Student Outcomes for Stress, Burnout, Depression and Anxiety. Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland), 12(5), 157. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy12050157
