Relação entre Sintomas Depressivos e Esperança Cognitiva em Universitários.

The university students are in the group of vulnerability to depressive disorder because they suffer different stressors during the course (e.g., dealing with new teaching rules, deadlines for work assignments) and due to the great changes in the process of entering adult life. One aspect that can contribute to the attenuation of depressive symptoms is the level of hope of the students, since this is related to the long-term planning and a positive perspective on life. Thus, this research aimed to verify the relationship between depressive symptoms and cognitive hope in university students. The instruments used were the Baptist Depression Scale - EBADEP-A and the Hope Index. The participants were 118 engineering students, 80.5% men (M = 20 years, SD = 4.2 years), students and graduates, from a private university in a city in the interior of São Paulo. The answers were analyzed via Student's t and Cohen's d, the comparison was between sex, freshman and veterans college student. The results suggest that incoming students have more hope than their graduates, no sex differences and the greater the hope, the less presence of depressive symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]