Objective: Psycho-social problems associated with the use of mobile phones are common among medical students. There is overuse of mobile phones among medical students which would have led them to deteriorate in academics due to stress, sleep disturbance or depression. This study was conducted to assess the pattern of mobile phone usage, its psycho-social impact namely stress, sleep disturbance and depression among professional college students and to find any association between usage pattern and the psychosocial impacts. Methods: After the ethical and departmental clearances were received, 100 medical students using a smart phone or feature phone and those willing to take part in the study were selected by purposive sampling. A cross-sectional type of study was conducted. An informed consent was given to each of them and questionnaires were administered by hand. It was then collected and analyzed using Epi Info 2007. The responses from 92 students out of 100 were received of which 71 were from girls and 21 were from boys. Frequency distribution of variables such as age groups and sex were worked out and tabulated. Mean and standard deviations of continuous variables were calculated. T-test was used to test the differences. Outcomes variables were categorized using known class intervals and cross-tabulated with usage pattern. Chi-square test was used to test the association. P-value was considered as significant when it was less than 0.05. Results: The results obtained were in accordance to the objectives i.e. increase in the number of hours of mobile phone usage led the students to have sleep disturbances such as reduced sleep, fragmented sleep or insomnia. Also there was a positive association the same with depression. But a third variable, stress was seen to be an incidental finding. Medical students are generally stressed as part of their busy schedule and use of mobile phones does not directly increase their stress levels. It may, thus, be concluded that there is a positive association between usage pattern of mobile phones, sleep disturbance and depression. Stress is an incidental finding unrelated to the use of mobile phones as such.

Keywords: Psycho-Social Problems; Mobile Phone Usage; Depression; Sleep Disturbance; Stress.