Prevalence of suicidal ideation in medical students: A systematic review. Ideación suicida en estudiantes de medicina.
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Abstract
It has been pointed out that medical students are a population vulnerable to suicidal behaviors; however, the evidence on the prevalence of suicidal ideation in these students is heterogeneous. The aim of this systematic review was to identify the prevalence of suicidal ideation in medical students, forms of measurement and its relationship with the identified prevalence. A search for articles was carried out in eight of the main scientific databases, a period of 10 years of publications was considered, the confidence intervals of the prevalence of suicidal ideation reported in each study were obtained, grouped according to the period of time that evaluated the instrument used and in each period the mean, variance, standard deviation and confidence interval (95%) of the mean were calculated. The results show that the reported presence of suicidal ideation lifetime was between 15.7 and 35.3%, during the medical career between 3.7 and 11.8%, during the last year between 7 and 35.6% and at present between 1.6 and 43.6%. Conclusion: There is a high variability in the prevalence of suicidal ideation among the different studies reviewed, possibly associated with various methodological biases. This review highlights the need to properly select the instruments to determine the prevalence of suicidal ideation.
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