Stress in university students of the Social Science area in Mexico City

Abstract

The objective of this work was to evaluate the stress in university students of the Social Science area, as well as to identify stressors, phychological variables, symptomatology and stress coping. Our study was conduced in a public institution of City Mexico. We recruited 505 students, who the SISCO Inventory of Academic Stress was applied. The results indicated that 95% presented stress. The most frequent level of stress was the medium (41.7%) followed by the moderately high (35.6%). The main stressors were the teachers' evaluations and the overload of tasks and jobs. The main physical alteration was drowsiness. They highlighted as main psychological alterations the restlessness and problems of concentration. The reluctance to perform school work and the alteration in food consu-mption were the main behavioral alterations detected. The most used coping strategies were the as-sertive ability and the elaboration of a design or plan. The results highlight the importance of im-proving measures to promote institutional health in stress.