In my graduation thesis, I study how students of the Faculty of Social Work handled mental problems and hardships that were a result of the coronavirus epidemic and measures adopted by the government. I mainly tried to determine how students perceived stress and any psychosomatic symptoms and how the epidemic affected their employment. In addition, I studied how often students take time for themselves and what forms of help are available to them at the Faculty and outside it. In the theoretical part of the paper, I present the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic in Slovenia and the importance of social work in the state of emergency, before focusing on mental health, in particular stress, depression, anxiety as well as certain other problems and disorders. I describe mental health of students, especially of social work students, during the coronavirus epidemic as well as forms of help available to students. In the empirical part, I present analysed results of a survey filled in by social work students. According to the results, students experienced severe stress, mainly due to social distancing and movement restrictions; some of them exhibited psychosomatic symptoms more often. An important factor contributing to anxiety was the loss of student employment and related loss of income. My research confirmed other authors' findings, saying that students' mental health has recently been a matter of concern. Many students had in fact suffered severe mental turmoil before the epidemic, but they had not often sought help, which changed after the epidemic. Students did not express their opinion regarding forms of help provided by the Faculty of Social Work in case of mental turmoil. I want to underline how important it is for the Slovenian society to start taking students' mental health seriously and provide them with different forms of help and assistance, while also making them aware of the importance of good mental health.
|
