Emotions and Stressing Situations Adaptation of Nursing Students in the New Normality

Background: New normality is uncertain in every sense, specifically in education and for many health disciplines. Being immersed in COVID-19 pandemics brought serious consequences for mental health, and is very important to handle emotions and stress coping strategies to obtain positive outcomes. Objective: To identify the most frequent emotions, as well as the adaptation strategies to the new normality faced by the students of nursing. Methods: Qualitative and phenomenological research, with the participation of 20 students from both genders in the middle term of nursing career at Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala, National Autonomous University of Mexico, from August to November 2021. Information was collected from a focal group for ten sessions;analysis was according to De Souza Minayo, and there was a signed informed consent letter from participants. Results: Four categories emerged with sub-categories. Category I Maximized emotions. Sub-categories: 1) Frustration, anger, disappointment;2) Personal disappointment, hopelessness, uncertainty;3) Depression. Category II Support elements close to the new normality. Sub-categories: 1) Family communication;2) Education for mental and physical health. Category III Stressing situations that exceeded the student. Sub-category: Disease in lovely ones. Category IV Stress coping strategies. Sub-categories: 1) Friends and relatives that help to get better;2) Family values. Informers pointed out to have maximized emotion, and having no self-control on its negative outcomes occurred;in addition, the situation was not favorable at home with several losses of loved ones, as well as a poor economy that threatened students to give up studies. Conclusion: Emotions facing this new normality are very important and should be attended to, their proper handling will result in a new learning of socio-emotional abilities, stress coping strategies development, better adaptation and informed decisions taken.

Coping strategies used by suicide attempters and comparison groups

A variety of factors have been identified as being risk factors for suicidal behaviour. One of them is the handling of stressful events. The aim of the present study was to investigate the coping-strategies used by suicide attempters and comparison groups. 37 patients who had recently made a suicide attempt, 38 suicide attempters at follow up, 20 psychiatric follow up controls, and 19 healthy controls filled in the COPE. We found that suicide attempters at long term follow up and healthy controls used more adaptive problem solving strategies than patients who had recently made a suicide attempt, or psychiatric controls at follow up, who used more maladaptive coping strategies. Our findings suggest that suicide attempters in a twelve year follow up are able to use coping strategies similarly to healthy controls by e.g. approaching the stressor actively. Further examinations of the impact of long term professional care and treatment of suicide attempters on their coping strategies are necessary.