Desempenho acadêmico e saúde mental na universidade, e afinal, qual o nosso sintoma?

Abstract

The academic scenario has undergone transformations in recent decades and presents new characteristics that mark the need for programs and actions that invest in the student’s permanence at university. According to recent publications, issues such as dropout rates, student assistance, quotas, behavior, quality of life and mental health are related to academic performance. Mental health, in turn, highlights changes in context and a duality that impacts the construction of its concept, as happens in Sciences, Medicine, Psychology, subjects and symptoms. The latter requires a perspective, according to Crema (2008), Dahlke (2004) and Sousa et al. (2021), that is integrative and makes it possible to see the symptom as a development and not just as a disease. Another important concept in the work is “Normosis”, which refers to the acceptance of suffering without question on the part of the individual. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the relationships between Academic Performance and Mental Health, through the analysis of responses from the NCHA Iic, applied in a Higher Education Institution, with university students. This descriptive and mixed research had theoretical support from the main themes, Academic Performance and Mental Health, and to adapt to reality, analyzes were carried out, using data from the National College Health Association inventory, second edition, applied to a sample of 5,310 interviewees from a Higher Education institution, in the state of Paraná. The statistical tools were: descriptive and associations using chi-square of categorical variables. In the descriptive data, there is a predominance of students with perceptions of large energy investments to maintain functionality at the university. The feeling of Anxiety is numerically more impactful than Depression. The smaller numbers related to suicidal behaviors demonstrate their complexity due to the degree of commitment to life. There are significant associations between Academic Performance and Mental Health that emerge from the themes of Anxiety and Depression, which coincide with more significant results in Low grades in tests and assignments and Failure in subjects or the entire course. It is possible to say that there are other difficulties in addition to Mental Health: learning, interpersonal relationships, financial difficulties and concern for people close to us, which interact with Academic Performance. And, in answer to the question in the title “what are our symptoms?” Perhaps the most important thing is to understand what he tells us. It can be seen from the numbers and analyses, that students are overworked and exhausted, with difficulty understanding and accumulating emotions, perception of anxiety and depression, impacted on their performance, exposed to the risk of determining the end of their own lives. This adaptation to the context and the sick system makes the student seek conformity and its results are: the impediment of meeting with desire, the interruption of the evolutionary flow, stagnation and self-forgetfulness. In other words, we experience supposedly acceptable suffering, but which can cost the loss of mental health and increase the number of years spent at university, or perhaps not even end. The bet is to look at the contributions that symptoms bring to the university, and move flows that include Academic Performance and Mental Health as important topics to be worked on in the organization as a whole, and not just for students.