the status of internet addiction disorder and its relationship with the mental health; a case study among medical sciences students of khalkhal university

aims: as a talented and educated groups, university students have a critical role in country, thus, their mental health has an especial importance in learning. the present study aimed to evaluate the relationship between internet addiction disorder and mental health among university students of medical sciences in khalkhal. instrument & methods: as a descriptive-analytical research, this study conducted on 428 university students in khalkhal who were studying the medical sciences in 2015. the instrument used in this study was a three-part questionnaire; the first part included the demographic characteristics of the participants; the second part was young internet addiction test and the third part consisted of general health questionnaire (ghq-28). sampling was done randomly. the collected data were analyzed using spss software. descriptive statistics, pierson correlation, and multiple linear regression were used to analysis the data. findings: 77.3% of the participants had no internet addiction, 21.7% were at the risk of internet addiction and 0.9% suffered from internet addiction. moreover, there was a significant relationship between the mental health and internet addiction disorder (p<0.05). conclusion: there is a relationship between the internet addiction and mental health of students.