Introduction: depression is a common disorder however students of medical sciences who are involved in providing physical and mental health of society are more vulnerable. Timely diagnosis of this disorder can provide opportunity to prevent progress of and complication of depression. The purpose of this study was to measure prevalence of depression among successful and unsuccessful students of Public Health and Nursing -Midwifery schools of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences in 2008. Method: This is a cross-sectional descriptive study, performed on 125 successful and unsuccessful students. Grade point average of previous semester was the selection criterion of students in each group. Data collection tool was a two segments questionnaire. The first segment was related to demographic information of people under study and the second one was related to measuring the amount of depression based on Beck test. Data were analyzed using SPSS software and analytical statistics was used to investigate the relation between variables. Results: 53 out of 125 subjects were suffering from different degrees of depression. Maximum prevalence of depression was identified within unsuccessful students of midwifery and nursing school. Statistical test of Χ2 showed statistically significant relationship between the amount of depression and three variables of successful and unsuccessful students including: 1) discontent with the field of study, 2) living in dormitory, 3) unsuccessful students of Public Health, Midwifery- Nursing schools. Conclusion: Public Health and Nursing- Midwifery students in Yazd had a high prevalence of depression. Therefore planning is required to support advisory services to control and prevent depression among students.

Keywords: depression, Beck test, successful, unsuccessful, students.

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