Abstract

VIEIRA, Kay Francis Leal  and  COUTINHO, Maria da Penha de Lima. Social representations of depression andsuicide elaborated by psychology students. Psicol. cienc. prof. [online]. 2008, vol.28, n.4, pp. 714-727. ISSN 1414-9893.

The following study deals with depression and suicide, two serious public health problems, under a psychosocial approach. Its aim is the assimilation of the social representations concerning these two phenomena as well as the investigation of their occurrence in an academic setting. Two-hundred and twenty-three students of both sexes, registered in all periods of the Psychology course of a public university participated in the research. The tools used were Beck’s depression inventory (BDI), Beck’s suicidal ideation scale (BSI) and the free technique of word association, with the use of three inductive stimulations: depression, suicide, myself. Depression was anchored on psycho-affective elements, whereas suicide was represented by the element death, that meant an escape. The self-image of the students, in general, emerges in a positive way, contrasting however with a significant index of depression and suicidal ideation in this population.

Keywords : Social representations; Depression; Suicide; Psychology students.

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