Impacto da covid-19 na saúde mental de universitários da UFC-Sobral: estudo sobre a sintomatologia do estresse, ansiedade e depressão

Abstract

The process of adapting to higher education is complex and requires university students to be able to deal with a series of new situations, both academic and personal/interpersonal. Emotional impacts can result in psychological symptoms, such as anxiety, stress and depression during the academic experience, but with the COVID-19 pandemic and the insertion of remote teaching, it caused several impacts for university students, accompanied by a period of changes, reorganization of routines, causing frustration, fears and anxieties about the uncertain scenario they experienced. This dissertation aimed to analyze the impact on the mental health of university students at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) - Campus Sobral during the COVID 19 pandemic, specifically evaluating depression, anxiety and stress among young people. It was a quantitative, cross-sectional and exploratory research. The sample consisted of 299 university students, over 18 years old, from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), Sobral campus. The instrument used for the research contained sociodemographic questions and the Anxiety, Depression and Stress Scale (DASS-21), being a self-administered online questionnaire. Data were collected during the last semester in which classes took place remotely. For data analysis, RStudio software (version 2022.02.3) and its packages olsrr (version 0.5.3), estimatr (version 1.0.0) and car (version 3.1-0) were used to carry out the statistical analyses. Among the results, 16.1% of the students who participated in the study had severe levels of depression, among which black students, people without partners and without religious ties stood out. While, anxiety was presented higher by the female gender, only 11% of the variation, which represented a small effect size. Regarding stress, only 15% of the variation showed stress levels, which represents an average effect magnitude. From the studies presented during the research, it is observed that the symptoms related to emotional health in university students are considered alarming and with the arrival of the pandemic and remote teaching, many symptoms have intensified, including depression, which was the highest rate presented in the studies. In this way, it reinforces the need for intervention measures regarding specific health promotion and prevention in the university context, investigating the factors associated with the emergence of symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression, considering the entire academic contexto.