Exploring students’ health: “another brick in the wall”

Background In latest years there was a growing interest in the scientific community to assess the quality of life and perceived health of university students. Some studies, performed mainly in north Europe and USA, showed that students, compared with their peers workers, live in greater hardship, have lower quality of life and worse perception of their health. In Italy this aspect, although the university has a high dropout rate and the rate of unemployment among graduates is high, have not been widely studied. The aim of this study was to describe the perceived health of university students and to investigate the influence of lifestyle variables. Methods The questionnaire SF-36 (8 scales scored from 0 to 100: physical activity, physical role, physical pain, general health, vitality, social functions, emotional role, mental health) was distributed to 480 first-years students of medicine, University of Siena (years 2005-2010). Information about gender, age, region of residence, marital status, employment status, BMI, smoking habit were collected. After a descriptive analysis, we performed univariate and multivariate analysis by robust regression. Results 57% of the sample was female. The average age was 19, students not-resident in Siena province were 46%. Lower mean scores (60) were achieved in vitality and emotional role scales. Higher mean score (95) was found in physical activity scale. There is a significant decrease of vitality score between years (p=0,001). Female gender was associated with lower scores in all scales, except emotional role. Increasing age was inversely associated with mental health (p = 0.017) and vitality (p = 0.027). To be not-resident was associated (p=0,025) with lower emotion role score. Conclusions Consistent with literature students feel psychological distress and females have a significant lower perceived health. This one, in particular emotive status, seems more influenced by factors like living away from home and uncertainty about the future than by lifestyle habits.