Among young people, university students make up the class considered most vulnerable to developing mental health problems resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, one way of understanding how the pandemic affects university students is through the sense of coherence construct (SOC), which has an important moderating role in mental health, since it is able to predict health. This study aimed to analyze the prevalence of depressive symptoms and coping resources (sense of coherence) in university students during social distancing, resulting from the pandemic. This is a quantitative, descriptive-exploratory and cross-sectional study. The sample of 242 university students was characterized as non-probabilistic, obtained with the application of the virtual snowball methodology. The following instruments were used: Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Sense of Coherence Questionnaire (SOC-13) and a semi-structured questionnaire. The participants had scores suggestive of the presence of depressive symptoms (M=16; SD=7.56) and average scores of sense of coherence (M=57; SD=8.39). There was a significant association between SOC-13 and PHQ-9, that is, a strong inverse association (R=-0.627) and significant (<0.0001) was observed, demonstrating that the higher the score of depressive symptoms, the lower the sense score. of coherence. Finally, regarding sociodemographic factors, there was a significant association between gender (<0.0030), age (<0.0001) and family income (<0.0011) with depressive symptoms and sense of coherence. In this scenario, it is necessary to develop actions and interventions on university campuses aimed at promoting the mental health of academics, helping them to deal with the stress and depression resulting from the pandemic.
Keywords:
health promotion; salutogenesis; university