Physical and mental health has been found to be affected by occupational factors that cause psychological strain. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the Prevalence of risk for mental disorders among paramedical students at the Fatemeh nursing &Midwifery college in Iran.

The studied population included 184 paramedical students from First year and fourth year of education. Self-administered questionnaires were used to solicit demographic information and Psychological ill health was measured using a standard instrument—the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ 28). In this study a cut-off point of 23 was used for prevalence estimations. By this scoring, if the total score was 23 or less (from84) then the person was regarded healthy. The higher the GHQ-28 scores indicated the subject might suffer from a psychiatric distress.

The majority of the respondents (68.5%) were between the ages of 20-24 years and 80.8 % were female.47.3 percent of paramedical students had GHQ scores of 24 and above, indicating an increased likelihood of psychological disorder. The average score was 25.93 +/-14.93.Depression has the lowest mean score (3.92+/-7.2), while social dysfunction has the highest mean score (8.12+/-3.97) among the subscales. GHQ scores between the dissatisfied and satisfied groups were statistically significant (P = 0.001).

This study suggests that paramedical students have high levels of stress, so counseling and other support services should be made available to them.