The purpose of this article was to identify the prevalence of depressive symptoms in nursing students in the 1st, 4th and 8th periods of a private college in Belém-Pa. Exploratory quantitative approach research and the instrument used was the Back-ll Depression Inventory. In a sample of 147 academics, 69 (46.94%) did not present depressive symptoms, 42 (28.57%) presented mild symptoms, 31 (21.08%) presented moderate symptoms and 5 (3.40%) had severe symptoms. Most academics presented indicative of mild to moderate depression symptoms. A greater change was observed in the results of the 8th period, which, to a certain extent, is in agreement with other studies carried out with students of the health area, for this phase of the course. It is also important to highlight a high index of symptoms of severe depression in the first period. From the results obtained, it was possible to observe the need for psychological attention to nursing students of all periods, aiming to offer support to deal with situations of psychological distress.