The suffering or illness of postgraduate students in Psychology:

necessary reflections

Abstract

Suffering or illness is present among postgraduate students. This topic is still little studied. The objective of this article is to present the results of research carried out with Psychology postgraduate students, identifying the existence and suffering causes. We will have a theoretical discussion about the affect-cognition unit in postgraduate studies, based on Historical-Cultural Psychology. We will present the information obtained in the research. The procedure adopted was the application of questionnaires during the years 2022 and 2023. As a result, we found that, in relation to the difficulties met, the most present responses refer to reconciling work and the demands of postgraduate studies, lack of time, relation with the advisor, financial difficulties, loneliness, low value of scholarships, high post/self-payment demands and productivity demands. The students, when discussing health problems, stated that they had experienced some form of illness and some mental problem in the last 12 months, such as anxiety and depression. The main ways of coping with suffering were support networks, colleagues, student grants, advisors and teachers. From the responses, we concluded that the specificity of suffering, as conflicting states of the affect-cognition unit, is related to the political-economic organization of this activity. Overcoming students' suffering/illness cannot be understood by reducing the problem to biological, hereditary and medicinal conditions. The confrontation must be collective, creating objective conditions so that the training space can enhance human development, with the presence of unity between sense and meaning of postgraduate studies.