Characteristics associated with depression, anxiety, and stress in university students

Introduction: The present research focused on analyzing the characteristics associated with depression, anxiety and stress in university students in times of COVID-19 pandemic, Method: The study had a non-experimental, correlational, prospective, cross-sectional design. The data collection technique was the survey, and its instrument was the DASS-21 questionnaire, which has a very good reliability of 0.91. It has been applied virtually to 385 Peruvian university students. Results: The results show that 12% of the students surveyed presented high stress, 7% severe anxiety and 9% severe depression. Among the factors associated with stress were age, previous major, having a job, having a chronic disease. Anxiety had associated factors such as age, having a previous career, work status and diagnosis of a chronic disease. Depression was associated with factors such as age, having children, having a previous major, internet connection, having a job, having been diagnosed with a chronic disease, having a family member or a close person with COVID-19, and finally having someone close who had passed away. Conclusion: Three logistic regression models were estimated with 77.3%, 68.2% and 63.3% certainty for stress, anxiety and depression, respectively.