Mental health status and coping strategies during COVID-19 pandemic among university students in Central Serbia.

Background: The objective of this research was to evaluate the occurrence of depression, anxiety, and stress, as well as the level of life contentment and coping mechanisms employed by college students amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A total of 588 students of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Higher School of Medicine, Kraljevo, University of Kragujevac, Central Serbia, participated in an online cross-sectional survey in the period September-October 2022. Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) was used to measure the levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. The Coping Questionnaire-a shorter version (Brief Cope Inventories) assesses the coping strategies a person uses in stressful situations, and the 5-item Life Satisfaction Scale is used to examine the level of life satisfaction. Results: The symptoms of depression were reported by 34.9%, of anxiety by 47.1% and of stress by 44.2%. The type of faculty (p = 0.001), and place of residence (p = 0.036) correlated with depression, gender with anxiety (p = 0.001) and stress (p = 0.015). In terms of coping mechanisms, the most frequently mentioned strategies, based on average scores, were acceptance (5.76), positive interpretation (5.55), humor (5.46). Conclusion: The adverse impact of COVID-19 was a risk factor for depression, anxiety and stress symptoms. A negative correlation exists between the levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, and the overall life satisfaction of university students. Offering the necessary assistance through psychological interventions and effective coping techniques is crucial in ensuring the optimal mental health of university students.

[Social cognition in schizophrenia].

Patients with schizophrenia display alterations in social cognition, as well as in the realm of neurocognition. It is still unclear to what extent these two cognitive domains represent two separate dimensions or different expressions of a unified deficit. Tasks used to assess social cognition subcomponents cover basic social cognition, such as mentalisation, data collection and making conclusions, source monitoring and characteristics of life-styles. The variety of findings of various studies is probably related to the fact that most studies considered social cognition as one-dimensional construct represented, for example, by unique measurements of emotional recognition. Research results dealing with social cognition suggest that the impairment of social cognition is the characteristic feature of schizophrenia and have important implications for the development, course and outcome of this disorder.