Transtornos mentais e seus impactos nos desempenhos ocupacionais dos estudantes universitários: revisão de escopo

Abstract

Mental disorders are considered, today, as a public health problem that can affect any subject in any period of their life cycle. There is a variation in the prevalence of Common Mental Disorder (CMD) in the population of university students from 18, 5% to 44.9%. Possible causes revolve around sudden biological, psychological, social, and routine changes that they undergo when entering higher education and affect cognition in order to cause loss of attention, concentration, difficulties in learning and in daily activities that are important for maintaining well-being, quality of life and mental health. The aim of this study is to identify the impact of common mental disorders on the occupational performance of university students. This review has five general steps: elaboration of the generating question; search for studies in the databases; selection of studies; extraction of study results; grouping, synthesis, and presentation of results. The search for the studies was carried out in the following electronic databases: Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Science (LILACS), Scientific Electronic Library Online (SCIELO), and CAPES Journal Platform. 684 references from different designs were found, however, after the selection stage, 13 scientific articles published between 2009 and 2020 in Brazil were reviewed. The most discussed topics among the studies were CMD, anxiety, and depression. The studies conducted pointed out impacts on the university student, on social skills, routine, attention, understanding, reasoning, emotional regulation, among others, which can interfere with performance skills, suggesting losses in the occupational performance of this population. However, most of the studies reviewed here do not provide an occupational overview of the impacts of the disorders. There seem to be few studies in specialized areas that relate to the occupational performance of university students to common mental disorders. It is suggested that the next cross-sectional studies with university students consider and investigate the spheres of occupational performance and that the reviews consider a greater number of selected studies.