Psychic illness in young university students

Abstract

Studies alert to the significant increase in recent decades of young people with mental disorders and suicide attempts. Most mental disorders among adolescents and young people are undiagnosed and untreated, with suicide being one of the main causes of death among young people aged 15 to 29 years. The university has been facing several problems with students' mental illness, such as increased use of psychotropic drugs, high demand for psychological care provided by the institution, school dropouts, severe mental disorders and even attempted suicide. Thus, this study aimed to survey the studies of the last five years (2016-2021) on the subject. The following keywords were used for the search: mental health; College students; mental illness, and 22 studies were selected. As a result, we observed that there is a significant number of mentally ill young people, with high rates of psychotropic medication use, in addition to alcohol and drug consumption. We also show that some higher education institutions have developed pilot studies with different approaches to meet this demand from sick students. However, there are still few studies, and there is no support from the institution's own management, as well as a lack of professionals and financial resources.