Estresse no ambiente acadêmico: revisão sistemática e estudo transversal com estudantes universitários

Abstract

The enrollment in college requires a number of adjustments which favors the experience of stress symptoms. Many students go through the experience of living alone, with friends or even strangers. Some must change their city, state or country, experiencing cultural differences and the absence of family. Also, they must understand the education system, dealing with different professors dealing with different pressures and doubts about the course. So, it is necessary to learn to deal with the academic routine. In this sense, the stress at high levels, may compromise the physical and psychological health of the student, interfering with the proper conduct of their academic life. The objective of this study was to systematically review the literature on the prevalence of stress among college students and to evaluate the prevalence of stress among the students of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro through the Stress Symptoms Inventory by Lipp (ISSL), linking it to sociodemographic variables obtained with a structured questionnaire. The results are presented through two articles included in this dissertation. In the first article, it was found by a systematic review that the international literature shows a prevalence of 36.30% to 95.70% of stress in college students. It was observed that there is little consistency between surveys, sometimes using different instruments, sometimes evaluating very diverse samples, making it difficult to compare studies. In the second article, using a cross-sectional survey design, there were 635 students respondents of both sexes, in a representative sample stratified by course, with about 8% of the studied universe, where it was identified a 50% prevalence of stress. The sample is characterized by having mostly unmarried students (90.20%) with a mean age of 22 years (SD = 3.96), and 96.50% have no children. There was also a predominance of females (63.50%). Most students do not have any paid work (59.30%), whether coming from work of scientific initiation scholarships or stipends. A large proportion live in public or private residences for students. Only 29.76% of the students reside with family. Additionally to the prevalence of stress, the stress phase and predominant symptomatology were also identified. The resistance phase and psychological symptoms were more prevalent (41.20% and 32.60% respectively), as well as higher prevalence of stress in females (56.20%), among students with less contact with family (59.70%) and who were living in private households (52.30%). It is also important to notice that 59.20% of students have felt the need for psychological care, which was directly related to the severity of the stress phase. It is important to conduct more studies, ample and adequate methodological rigor, preferably through longitudinal designs, which accompany the students along the academic career and to bring more robust results that confirm some of these data found