Effect of Acute Psychological Stress on Blood Pressure

Medical training is perceived as being stressful with negative consequences on student's Mental and physical health resulting in depression, poor academic performance and stress responses. Especially First year MBBS students are in great stress as they are in the transition phase of their life. Medical students face many stresses in their academic life out of which examinations is a major psychological stressor. Majority of previous studies indicate that psychosocial stress contributes to hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Whereas some reviews have only weak or inconsistent evidence, concluding acute psychosocial stress is probably not a risk factor for hypertension.

Hence this study was done to evaluate perceived stress during academic examination and it's Correlation with cardiovascular reactivity.

In this study, we analyzed the results of the Perceived Stress Score (PSS) and the blood pressure variations and whether these changes was affected by sex, age, among first year medical students one month before and during examination.

One hundred and fifty (100 males and 50 females) first year medical students were given the PSS questionnaire one month before and immediately after the examinations. Their blood pressure was also recorded on both the occasions by mercury sphygmomanometer.

Statistically we found that all the medical students had higher values of PSS score both before and during the examination period and significantly increased during exams (P value-0.040). There was also significant increase in systolic and diastolic blood pressure during the examination.

The results cover a significant correlation of academic examinations to psychological stress and cardiovascular reactivity.