The Impact of Anxiety and Depression on the Quality of Life of the university Students: the Slovak experience

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Aim. This paper explores the relationship between the two closely related phenomena of health and quality of life. Health has a physical and mental form, mental diseases are divided into several groups: a) no mental diseases, b) anxiety and depression and c) suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. The paper is focused on the mental health of university students, especially on the category of students experiencing anxiety and depression and the impact of these mental diseases on thequality of life. It is based on a non-medical understanding of health, based on self-reported health by individuals. The numbers of people suffering from depression before the outbreak of the pandemic in Europe and in the world are given. The recently ended COVID-19 pandemic had a robust impact on all segments of society, including the concept of the quality of life. Several unresolved epistemological questions related to the quality of life are presented. Anxiety and depression are illnesses, in the context of the quality of life they are related to ill-being. This knowledge questions the identification of the quality of life with well-being. Three goals are formulated. The first is to explore how perceived anxiety and depression affected students’ quality of life during the pandemic. The second goal is to measure the quality of life of students affected by anxiety and depression and compare it with the quality of life of all students participating in the research. The third goal is to discover which of the variables are predictors of anxiety and depression and which are predictors of the quality of life. Results. The higher the values of suicidal expressions, the lower the values of pre-pandemic relationships, health, quality of life and trust, and vice versa. Because the category ‘suicidal behavior’ belongs to the ‘negative indicators’, the variables quality of life, health, relationships before the pandemic and trust are its predictors. Furthermore, in women, ‘Suicidal manifestations’ are positively correlated with all life variables, which can surprisingly be interpreted as the fact that the growth of suicidal manifestations is accompanied by an increase in confidence with a large correlation, an increase in the quality of life, health and social relationships with a medium correlation. Because the category ‘Suicidal manifestations’ belongs to the ‘negative indicators’, variables trust, quality of life, health and social relations are not its predictors. Up to three levels of subheading are permitted. Subheadings should not be numbered. Method. The present study applies both secondary and primary research. On the one hand, the present researchers base the data on Eurostat, WHO, and large-scale studies, and, on the other hand, the variables are determined by primary data from an online questionnaire in which university students in Slovakia indicate answers on the Cantril scale of 0-10. The questions are listed in the appendix. The key questions are focused on the impact of the pandemic on the psyche and the quality of life. Conclusion. The research took place in the months of April, May and June 2022. Students of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral studies at Slovak universities participated in it, N=389. Attention is focused on students who felt anxiety and depression. Variables that can be assumed to influence the quality of life and mental health of university students are identified. These variables are anxiety and depression, quality of life and further health (both physical and mental), social relationships, relationships with the loved ones before the pandemic, and trust. The inclusion of health, anxiety and depression and quality of life is related to the focus of this paper. The variables – social relations, relations with the closest ones before the pandemic and trust – express social capital. Together with lifestyle, this is a factor influencing the relationship between physical and mental health. Loneliness as a form of social relationships is a strong predictor of worsening mental health.