Mental Health of undergrad Students and its Relations with Academic Dimensions
mental health, university student, academic integration, anxiety, stress
Several studies and reports in the press have characterized university students as a population with a high prevalence of depression, anxiety and high levels of stress.This fact has aroused a growing interest about possible relationships between academic experiences and student mental health. In this context, this research aimed to analyze the mental health of university students and its relationship with some academic dimensions. This work consists of 3 studies, the first sought to describe a panorama of students' mental health, the second was dedicated to comparing the mental health of quota students and non-students. the second was dedicated to comparing the mental health of quota and non-quota students, while study 3 investigated the relationship between academic dimensions and mental health problems. This research fits as a cross-sectional design with a descriptive correlational character, based on a quantitative approach. The data survey was carried out using an online instrument, consisting of a Sociodemographic and Lifestyle Questionnaire, some scales related to academic dimensions, the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20) and the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) -21). 7,177 undergraduate students from the Federal University of Bahia participated in the research. The results indicated high prevalence of CMD 71.5%, depression 49.1%, anxiety 54.5% and stress 54.8%. Quota students, in general, had worse mental health conditions than non-quota students, with higher prevalences of CMD, depression, anxiety and stress. The results also demonstrate that there are some important correlations between academic and social integration factors with mental health, with satisfaction with performance, the dimension that showed the greatest association with CMD, (r = -0.415; p <0.001), Depression (r = -0.391; p <0.001), Anxiety (r = -0.300; p <0.001) and Stress (r = -0.311; p <0.001). Based on the results, it is proposed some strategies to overcome some problems identified with the reserach design.