Implicações do contexto universitário na saúde mental dos estudantes

Abstract

The objective of this research was to investigate the university context and its implications on the mental health of students. The methodology was divided into two stages: the first consisted of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the forms of 288 undergraduate students who sought psychological care at the Psychology Service of the Sorocaba campus of UFSCar, where the researcher acts as a psychologist. The results revealed the predominance of female students (64.2%), first and second year students (60%) and non-scholarship holders of the Student Assistance Program (76.3%). Regarding the complaints related to the university, the categories with the highest rates were those associated with academic performance, professional doubt and difficulty in friendships, with 44%, 21.5% and 20% respectively. With the increase in the age group of students, a greater number of complaints were identified about academic performance, career future and complaints from teachers, which can be explained by the pressures arising from family and labor market and from themselves to complete the course, because they consider themselves behind due to age. In the second stage, four focus groups were held, with axes in the family, in the interpersonal relationship, in the academic and in the career, followed by the qualitative analysis of the speeches.The results pointed to the feeling of being pressured, due to the overload of tasks, and the competition among the students as triggering elements of psychological suffering. The results also included complaints about teachers, indicating the presence of bullying in the university environment. It was observed that aspects specific to institutions, such as bureaucracies and norms, cross relationships and make it difficult to form affective bonds between teachers and students.Some suggestions to minimize the psychological suffering of the students were presented by the participants of the focus groups, such as: provide spaces for exchange between teachers and students outside the classroom context, reduce the number of subjects in the curriculum and include participation in entities as a mandatory activity, create welcoming and relaxing spaces and greater performance of the student movement in issues of university mental health.