Desenvolvimento e uso de um software para avaliação de sintomas depressivos em acadêmicos.

Abstract

Depression is a highly prevalent disease in the general population, with a significant increase in cases among university students. Signs and symptoms can lead to low academic performance of students and negatively influence this stage of life. And often individuals suffering from depression do not seek professional help. Given what has been observed, the objective of this work was to evaluation and test a software, which uses a scale for evaluation depressive symptoms, to assess the occurrence of these symptoms in students. For this, a search for depressive symptom assessment scales to be used was performed. Later, the “Emotional Assessment Software (SAVE)” was created through programming in PHP language, where the user, through the internet (smartphones, notebooks, computers, tablets), could answer the scale. To test its usability, SAVE was deployed at the State University of Ponta Grossa, where access was free for academics and servers. The total number of participants who answered the questionnaire on the SAVE platform was 678 students, which refers to 6.7% of the total number of students at UEPG. Of the total number of students who responded to the inventory, 539 (79.5%) had a score greater than or equal to 10, and 139 students (20.5%) had a score below 10. In the months analyzed, the highest number of answered questionnaires it was the month of release. The results reveal the importance of the SAVE tool for screening depressive symptoms in students. And, the university has a very important role in research with the aim of improving the mental health of students and, consequently, their results. Such thinking converges with that of the WHO (World Health Organization) which points out the need for efforts to improve the mental health of the population.