Mental health and Covid-19: coping strategies and post-traumatic stress in higher education students ; Saúde mental e Covid-19: estratégias de enfrentamento e estresse pós-traumático em estudantes do ensino superior

During the pandemic, there has been a significant increase in psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression and stress among university students. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common pathological outcome of a wide variety of traumatic events. Higher education students have faced numerous challenges and have had to develop and rescue ways of coping with the discomforts generated by the pandemic, protective strategies are positive variables that cancel out the effects of risk factors. This article aims to analyze the mental health of higher education students during the covid-19 pandemic, correlating its effects with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and ways of coping. The sample consisted of 427 higher education students from Ceará, and the instruments used were the PCL-5 scale and the Coping Strategies Inventory, applied in 2022. The participants were 59.5% female, the average age was 25.5 years (SD ± 4.0 years), 52.2% declared themselves brown and 84.5% said they were single. The students suffered from PTSD as a result of the pandemic and used coping strategies to deal with the stressors caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The results showed that PTSD tended to increase with an increase in the following coping strategies: Factor 1 - confrontation, Factor 2 - withdrawal, Factor 3 - self-control and Factor 5 - acceptance of responsibility. PTSD showed a tendency to decrease with an increase in the following coping strategies: Factor 4 - social support, Factor 7 - problem solving and Factor 8 - positive reappraisal. It is recommended that higher education institutions monitor the mental health status of their students, to support those still suffering from the harmful effects of the covid-19 pandemic. ; Entre os estudantes universitários no período pandêmico teve-se um aumento significativo de perturbação psicológica, como a ansiedade, depressão e estresse. Sendo, o transtorno de estresse pós-traumático (TEPT) o resultado patológico comum de uma ampla variedade de eventos traumático. Os estudantes do ...