Abstract: Background: Participating in sports has a positive influence in many areas. It supports positive mental health and improves social skills along with promoting physical health. Participating in sports develops healthy living habits that provide physical benefits such as developing coordination, physical fitness, and strength. Sports and Exercise reduces the levels of stress hormones in our body. At the same time, physical activity stimulates production of endorphins. These are natural mood lifters that can help keep stress and depression at bay and in this way, sports add up to the happiness too.
Objectives: This Study Aims to assess the effect of participation in sports on the self-esteem and happiness of medical students, and to identify healthy habits developed due to participation in sports among medical college students.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted between June to November 2022 among 206 randomly selected medical students of age 18 to 26 years of various medical colleges of Central India in Indore District who gave consent, using a pre-designed, pre-tested, semi-structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was constructed based on two scales (Rosenberg self-esteem scale and Subjective happiness scale) for measuring self-esteem and happiness respectively. Data entered in Microsoft excel have been analysed by using SPSS software25.0 (trial version).
Results: In this study 43.2% participants were Males and 56.8% were Females. Among them 49.5% belonged to 20-21 years age and mean age (in years) of participants was 20.89 with S.D. (Standard Deviation) of 1.57. Majority (69.4%) of the participants used to play sports while 30.6% did not play sports. Among those who were playing sports, 44% used to play badminton and 74.1% spent <1 hour/day on sports. 97.9% felt refreshed after playing sports and 97.2% opined that sports have effect on self-esteem and happiness of a person. Mean Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) Score of participants, those who played sports was 4.823±0.69 (S.D.). Mean SHS Score of participants those who did not play sports was 3.26±0.63 (S.D.). Mean Rosenberg Self-Esteem (RSE) Score of participants those who played sports was 27.00±3.15 (S.D.). Mean RSE Score of participants those who did not play sports was 23.65±2.82 (S.D.).
Conclusion: Subjective happiness scale score and Rosenberg self-esteem score were found to be greater among those who played sports compared to those who did not play sports and both were statistically significant (p<0.05).
