Unhealthy behavior in junior medical students: is there a reason for concern?

Introduction: Conventional wisdom has it that medical students, who are supposed to work in health care services in their future, should be more responsible for their health and lead a healthy lifestyle. What signs of unhealthy behavior do they show in reality? Objectives: Our objective was to study dominating factors of unhealthy behavior in junior medical students. Methods: We used the Lutsenko & Gabelkova's questionnaire for health disorders (2013) to survey the first and second-year students of a medical faculty - 36 females and 65 males aged 18-25. Results: The research revealed that among the most evident signs of healthy behavior disorders in the surveyed students are as follows: insufficient self-control (25.7 %), which testifies for insufficient ability to control their emotions and cope with stress; emotional incompetence (19.8 %), which speaks about inability of future doctors to differentiate emotions, which can lead to conflicts or somatization of anxiety in a stressful situation; eating disorders (17.8%), seen as either inability to control meals or using food as means to cope with stress; self-destructing behavior in the form of consuming psychoactive substances (10.8%); drive for smoking (8.9%). Cumulative evident disorders of healthy behavior were revealed in 5.9% of the surveyed medical students. Conclusions: Most junior medical students follow healthy lifestyles. The main risk factor is the decline in deliberate selfregulation at the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral levels. To get a more holistic view, the given research should also involve senior medical students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]