Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread globally, being a still latent threat that has been affecting the well-being of humanity. Government authorities have been forced to take extreme restrictive measures to act against the advance of the infection and lethality of the coronavirus, this has brought changes at a social and economic level. Mandatory social isolation, the mandatory use of personal protection, distance education and the total or partial suspension of productive activities affect the general population, generating concern and uncertainty. In our Peruvian reality, the pandemic and the measures established for the health care of the population have caused significant concern in the authorities of the education sector, due to the psychosocial impact that has been affecting university students. Many of them have lost or diminished their sources of personal and family income, jeopardizing their academic goals.

Regarding the psychosocial impact, fear and anxiety include a series of internal and external expressions that are perceived as danger or threat from the environment. Recent studies in the university population show that the psychological impact is related to the coronavirus disease, which allows to show feelings that affect their emotional health and academic performance. Likewise, they emphasize that the factors that put the emotional well-being of the university student at risk must be identified in a timely manner.

In this framework, the objective of the study was to identify fear and anxiety about COVID-19 during the health emergency, in students of a psychology program in Lima. The focus of this research was quantitative, its methodological design being correlational transversal. There was a population of 37 students from the 1st semester of a psychology program. The data collection instruments used were The Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S), made up of seven items, and The Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS), made up of five items. The results show that there is a significant relationship between fear and anxiety due to COVID-19 (p <0.05). In relation to fear, the medium effect predominated with 37.8% (n = 14), followed by the small with 27% (n = 10), large with 21.6% (n = 8) and the medium large with 13.5 % (n = 5). Regarding anxiety, the group without dysfunctional anxiety predominated with 75.7% (n = 28) and dysfunctional anxiety in 24.3% (n = 9).

The results show that there is a smaller group of students who should be paid attention to. The student welfare office, in coordination with the academic area, as part of the care and follow-up of the newly admitted student, must establish strategies that allow them to timely identify psychosocial risk factors in them, as well as guide them so that they can face academic life in a positive way and any situation that affects their emotional health.

Keywords:

Fear, Anxiety disorders, student health, COVID-19.