Concern over anxiety disorder among young students in Latin America

ABSTRACT

With the growing number of anxiety disorder cases among university students in different countries, it is important to evaluate, compare and demonstrate different ways to obtain information about the mental health status of these students. This paper evaluates the prevalence and compares anxiety disorders in a population of university students to provide information to aid the formulation of public health policies and develop actions to support students. The study was conducted using primary data (n = 427), composed of students from two universities in Latin America. The fuzzy TOPSIS method was used to analyze the collected data, with the research instruments Generalized Anxiety Disorder -GAD-7 and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory- STAI. The originality of this research lies in the fact that it is the first article in the literature to use the proposed methodology to analyze anxiety disorders in university students in Latin America countries. The data were adapted for cloud analysis, particularly the multicriteria method, which contributes to public health studies. Together with the instruments, the method generated insights that corroborate the World Health Organization (WHO) data. This study may assist public policymakers in providing greater support for citizens with anxiety disorders. It is hoped that the results of this study can assist managers in public health decision making by proposing public policies that mitigate anxiety disorders that affect thousands of university students worldwide. 

KEYWORDS:

• Public health
• anxiety disorder
• Trait Anxiety
• state anxiety
• university students
• fuzzy TOPSIS

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the participants and universities involved in the research, as well as other university employees.

We are grateful to the editor and anonymous reviewers for all suggestions, contributions, and recommendations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval and consent to participate

This research did not receive any specific subsidies from funding agencies in the public, commercial or non-profit sectors. The Regional Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Santa Maria approved the study protocol (project number 054104 - CAEE: 30859 720.8.000.5346 - CONEP). The study was conducted in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations.

Authors’ contributions

DJCS designed the study. LFDL, LA, SSB, and CASR collected, analyzed, and interpreted the data. DJCS, LFDL and SSB wrote the manuscripts with the support of CPV, WVS, and LSCVS. All the authors provided critical feedback and approved the final manuscript.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14635240.2022.2086897

Additional information

Funding

This research received no external funding.