Abstract

 Background and Objective: it seems that studying medicine is distinct from other academic disciplines in that medicinal studies exert more stress (environmental, emotional or physical stress) that is more unique and special in this field. This study aimed at contrastive analysis of Psychological Disorders among medical and non-medical students at different educational levels. Materials and Methods: the sample under investigation consists of 212 medical students at Zanjan University of Medical Sciences in 89-88 school year, selected through census and evaluated by SCL90 checklist and demographic questionnaire. The current study is a cause-comparison study and descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Kruskal-Wallis and U-Mann-Whitney) were used for data analysis. Results: After analyzing the data by SPSS software results showed that there are significant differences in all the total index (GSI) and the small - scale test SCL90 (except the physical preparation, anxiety and hostility, 05 / 0 <α), between three groups of medical students and all these differences are significant at the level of 0.o1> p (except phobia 05 / 0> α) is. Students' mental health scores at higher levels have improved considerably.                                                                                                                                                          Conclusion: According to the results of this study, it is concluded that studying medicine with regard to its stressful nature cannot be effective in putting the mental health of students in danger, because the results suggest that students at higher levels had better mental health.                                                                            Keywords: Psychological disorders, medical students (basic sciences, training, internship), non-medical students.