Stress and anxiety for the university students.

The scientific literature has highlighted how the incoming and outgoing transitions through the university represent stressful moments for students. Generally, an adaptation of one’s self it’s needed [1-5] with the effects that the student must necessarily reorganize its time, its method of study, its interpersonal relationships, as well as the separation from home and the redefinition of its training and employment project. This “change” activates some adaptation strategies that may be functional or dysfunctional to the realized path, also generating manifestations of psychological distress. The DSM-5 [6] introduced the cluster of “exam anxiety”, assimilated within the more general anxiety disorder and characterized by concern and lack of adaptation response to the stressor “university examination”. Furthermore some factors have also been identified (personality traits, low self-esteem and social support) that would represent an obstacle for adaptive functions in the integration process related to the university experience [7,8]. Students may experience different forms of discomfort: disorientation, psychological deadlock, blocking their studies, anxiety by exam, difficulty in concentrating, difficulty in adapting and affective / relational issues [9]. The results of the SCL-90R Test [10], that measure 9 primary symptom dimensions and that we used with students of Psychological Counseling Center ‘M. Cesaro’ of the University of Salerno (Italy), show that the university students have clinical disorders almost severe in Anxiety (standard deviation 11) and Global Severity index with standard deviation [10].