Abstract:

The research study focuses on significant symptoms of civilizational stress from 2016 to 2022 in the university student population. It thus includes the period before the Covid 19 pandemic, the course of this pandemic, the period of war in Ukraine and the current economic crisis in the European region. The aim of the research is to clarify the causes of the increase in individual stress factors in the sample of 648 UHK students majoring in information management, economics and management and tourism, at the average age of 20. The research is based on the methodological procedure of a longitudinal questionnaire survey from the psychological areas of frustration tolerance, stress potential zones, stress coping strategies and psychosomatic symptoms. In the area of frustration tolerance, the ability to have a healthy self-esteem decreased by 15%, the ability to divide a task into manageable parts by 12.2%, and the level of enthusiasm for work by 11.0%. Conversely, the ability to fully accept responsibility increased by 13.3%, the length of spare time spent outside home increased by 8.4%, and the feeling of an excessive amount of work increased by 7.1%. In the area of stress potential zones, the representation of the third zone of healthy stress management decreased by 9%, and on the contrary, the representation of the dangerous fifth zone of stress potential increased by 9%. Harmful malcoping strategies focused on emotions and unhealthy behaviour increased significantly for both men and women, while the number of healthy coping strategies decreased considerably for women by 6%. In the comparison of individual fields of study, the number of strategies for healthy coping with increased workload decreased the most in students of economics, from 60% to 53%, i.e. by a significant 7% of occurrence. Between 2016 and 2022, the total number of psychosomatic symptoms increased by approximately 10%. Almost half of the respondents reported the symptom of fatigue with lack of energy (49.8%) and also the symptom of increased heart rate, sometimes associated with palpitations (43.0%). A significant figure concerns frequent headaches, namely in 41.4% of occurrences in the entire sample of students. In 2022, the symptoms of memory disorders were very common in men (42%), in women in the same year the symptom of fatigue was the most frequent (54%). Our survey showed a significant increase in stress symptoms in individual parameters among the student population due to significant changes in the society. For this reason, preventive procedures in the field of psychohygiene, cognitive behavioral therapy and healthy management of increased mental and physical stress are proposed at the end of the study.

Keywords:

COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, economic crisis, increase in stress factors, study fields of information management, economics and tourism management.