Introduction:

Medicine is one of the most stressful areas of education due to high academic and professional demands. Academic stress affects diverse variables such as emotional state, physical health, or interpersonal relationships, which can be experienced differently by each person.

Objective:

To evaluate the levels of academic stress and mental depression in the students of the first academic year of Medicine.

Methods:

Cross-sectional study, with a population made up of the 732 first-year medical students of Mariana Grajales Cuello School of Medical Sciences. The sample consisted of 246 students selected through simple random sampling and to whom an electronic survey was applied.

Results:

75.73% of the students were aged 18 or 19 years, 153 were female, 63.11% presented an excessive level of stress, 56.8% presented pathological stress, 54.85% presented a medium level of depression, and 57.69% of those who presented excessive stress had a medium level of depression. Difficulty for coping with problems influenced the onset of depression.

Conclusions:

The levels of academic stress and mental depression were closely related based on their onset.