Mental health intervention protocol for university students through support groups to promote adaptation to university life

Abstract

Introduction: Difficulties in adapting to university life are of vital importance at the individual level due to its influence on mental health and because university life can be seen as part of the development of the life cycle, but also at the public health level due to to its high prevalence and its possibility of impacting dropout rates through the development of a positive mental health intervention (. There is evidence that social support groups administered during the first weeks of university life function as buffers from stressful experiences, allow students to establish new social ties with peers who face the same adaptive difficulty, the same increase in academic demand and the same process of separation and independence from parents, therefore the objective of our study is to build a protocol that proposes a pilot on the intervention with support groups in students with difficulties in adapting to university life.Methods: A search of the literature was carried out in databases, snowball reviews and gray literature, obtaining articles that were used as a reference for the creation of the protocol. The participants are first-semester students from different faculties of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, not transferred, in whom the aim is to evaluate the adaptation to university life through the questionnaire of academic experiences (QVA-r) proposed to be applied as a pre-intervention and the presence of stress. academic through the SISCO questionnaire. Students who agree to participate will begin a series of interventions divided into modules and sessions that make up the protocol.