Systematic Literature Review on Anxiety in Higher Education Students

Abstract

In Higher Education, stressful routines often contribute to the development of anxiety disorder or getting worse pre-existing conditions. This study aimed to conduct a systematic review of the literature in national journals from 2005 to 2019 on anxiety disorder in university students. The articles were searched in the following databases: Google Scholar, SciELO, LILACS and Pepsic. The inclusion criterion was used only for journals with the theme anxiety in university students and from the analysis of abstracts 37 articles were obtained. Thus, articles that did not fit the adopted criterion were excluded. The results led to characterization studies (13), intervention (13), prevalence (5), experience report (2) and instrument construction (1). The publications on characterization and intervention were those with the highest incidence due to the fact of determining and having tools and even strategies to better intervene in the student context itself. The study contributes to the practice of new research on the topic and expands knowledge about the factors that imply anxiety disorders in higher education students. One of the limitations of the study was that it did not include other data sources such as books, dissertations and theses.