An Epidemiological Survey Of Internet Addiction Disorder Among Medical Students

With the soaring number of internet users, the problem of Internet Addiction among undergraduates has attracted high attention. Internet addiction is defined as an individual's excessive internet use, which eventually causes social, psychological difficulties in a person's life. It shares characteristics like psychological dependence to internet, increasing time spent online, achieving satisfaction from internet, becoming irritated when cutting back use, limited physical activity, decreased social interaction with people, using internet to escape vexation and emotional problem, disclaiming the passive effect of excessive use of intenet on study, work, and life, and finally leading to psychological problems as well as obstacles while communicating with others.Objective: To study the prevalence of IAD, mental health state and personality traits among medical students by sampling method,and analyse the influential factors. It will help to make effective policy of IAD preventive and control among medical studectsMethod: This study was performed on undergraduates in certain medical universty; 823 student were selected by stratified sampling method while 727 voluntarily participated in the study and completed the self-report questionnaires in class. Questionnaires, which included Basic Information Questionnaire, Internet Addition Rating Scale, Symptom Check Lisk-90(SCL-90), Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Adult (EPQ-A) and Sensation Seeking Questionnaire, were collected immediately after they were completed. All the data was imported in computer through Epidata ( Version 3.0) with logical test, and then analyzed by SPSS(Version 12.0 for Windows).Results:1. Internet addition disorder criteria was adapted from DSM-IV criteria for pathological gambling by Yong. Of 757 participants who fully completed the survey, 58 participants met the criteria for IDA (Prevalence of Internet Addiction=7.67%), whose main goal for internet using was playing games.2. Prevalence of Internet Addition varied with gender and grade. The rate of the males was significantly higher than that of the females(χ2=12.14,P<0.001); as well as the high grade to the lower grade(χ2=18.65,P=0.001), family income above 3000 group to below 3000 group(χ2=12.46,P=0.006), single-parent group to nonsingle parent group(χ2=4.83,P=0.028). The results also showed that IAD was significantly related to education status of their father or mother(P<0.001;P=0.002).3. Significant difference was found in mental health level between internet addicts and nonaddicts of medical students. Addicts tended to get more scores in somatization, compulsion, interpersonal relation, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobophobia, bigoted, psychosis and others in SCL-90 questionare(P<0.01).4. Compare addict groups with non-addict groups, they had different personality traits. The two groups varied significantly with psychoticism, emotion stability, validity in T distrubition(P<0.01), while as to the character of introvert and extroversion, they were similar(t=0.25,P=0.802).5. Sensation seeking was related to internet addition among medical students. The higher level group of sensation seeking was more possible to be internet addict (χ2=28.61,P<0.001). IAD group tended to be more disinhibition level than non-IAD group(t=11.02 , P<0.001), while excitation and adventure seeking was the same in the two groups(t=0.288,P=0.774).6. Grade,single-parent, and sensation seeking were the main influencing factors according to multinomal logistic regression analysis. Conclusion: Internet addition is a problem in medical students; it varies significantly with gender and grade, and should be related to the family economic situation, education level of parents and if in the single parent family. Internet addicts present different personality traits. People who are in the higher level of sensation seeking tend to be more sussceptible to be a addict. In a word, internet addition can influence the mental health of undergraduates, so we must focus on the prevention of internet addition by valid internet education, and let the students use the internet in a reasonable and safe way.