Student Assistance Team profile providing mental health support services to students at federal universities in Brazil

The present work is a pioneering research in the area of Student Assistance that aims to know the profile of the teams, services offered to students, working conditions and training needs of Brazilian Federal Universities in relation to mental health care. More recently, the mental health of university students has drawn the attention of research, but there are few findings that focus on possibilities for training or evaluating and developing public policies specifically focused on mental health in Universities.The instrument used was a survey-type questionnaire and the sample included student assistance teams from 65 Federal Universities, with 215 participants. Professionals from social assistance, pedagogy and psychology participated. According to our logistic regression model, the results show that having received training courses related to student assistance almost doubled the chance (OR = 1,989) of being able to work, even though the offer of specific courses is minimal and most of them are cross-cutting themes to the work. Additionally, the results show the complexity of the work of student assistance teams and their regional and institutional differences, as well as the need to implement professional qualification policies for the quality of services offered to university students.

Keywords:
student assistance; student health services; professional training