BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Dentistry students are exposed to environmental stresses in addition to educational stresses. The continuous stress can lead to the complications such as physical, mental and emotional injuries. Strengthening the physical, mental and social resources can improve the performance and health of students against stress. The aim of this study was to evaluate the stress level and identify the stressors in faculty of dentistry in medical sciences of Babol.

METHODS: This cross-sectional study was done in academic year of 2013-2014 on dentistry students who entered the Dentistry Faculty of Babol from 2008. In this research, two questionnaires were concurrently used. The first questionnaire was DASS21 and the second one was derived from the research of Mashhad Dentistry Faculty to investigate the factors that generate the stress. Questionnaires were analyzed based on the variables of gender, age and entrance year.

FINDINGS: 217 students included 96 male (44.2%) and 121 female (55.8%) completed the questionnaires. 74.2% of students who were in fourth grade had abnormal stress. In addition, there was no significant difference in the stress mean of two genders. Role of the academic stressors such as failing in final exam, embarrassing to injure the patients and to catch the infectious diseases significantly was higher than the non-academic stress factors on the stress level of students.

CONCLUSION: The results showed that the dentistry students had high levels of stress and most of them were related to academic factors.