Volume 30, Issue 2, 2021
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.4038
SUICIDAL IDEATION AND SUICIDAL THOUGHTS IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Abstract
Suicidal ideation and suicidal thinking are relevant phenomena to study given their high incidence among university students in higher education, even more so if during the academic period students are affected by a pandemic such as COVID-19. Consequently, this systematic review's objective was to determine the prevalence of suicidal ideation and suicidal thinking in university students during the COVID-19 pandemic and, as a secondary objective, to establish possible risk faactors. The search was performed following the PRISMA model in the Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and Medline search engines between January 2020 and January 2021, and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) was used to evaluate the methodological quality of the studies. Regarding the results, at the end of the search, nine relevant studies were identified for analysis: four on suicidal thoughts, four on suicidal ideation, and one on suicide as a continuous variable. In conclusion, it was possible to stipulate that the average prevalence of suicidal ideation and suicidal thoughts were 17.8% for the university population. Likewise, the risk factors associated with the appearance of suicidal thoughts and ideation in university students during the COVID-19 pandemic were ethnographic, psychological, contextual and health factors
Keywords
suicidal ideation, suicidal thinking, mental health, university students, COVID-19 pandemic.