SUMMARY
AIM: This study was planned and carried out with the objective of determining stress coping levels and mental state of students attending Police Vocational Schools of Higher Education, in addition to factors effecting these.
MATERIAL and METHOD: This desciptive and cross-sectional study consisted of 300 male students enrolled in the 2005-2006 academic year, at Police Vocational School of Higher Education, located in central Erzincan, Turkey. In this study, instead of random sampling, 281 (93.7%) students who were present at the school at the time of the study and accepted to partipate in it were included. Data for this study was collected using a desciptive form created by the researchers, Rosenbaum’s Learned Resourcefulness Scale (RLRS) and The Symptom Check List-90-R (SCL-90-R). During the data analysis, frequency distributions, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis and analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) were used; and for analysis of independent groups, t-test was used.
RESULTS: Among the students, it was determined that 54.8% were 1. grade, 90.7% had their parents living together, 43.5% had a father and 60.5% had a mother who graduated from elementary school, fathers of 23.5% of students were retired, 93.6% of them had mothers who were home makers. In addition, it was found out that 78.6% of students chose their profession willingly, the average family income of 71.5% of students were at medium levels, 82.9% always believed in themselves and 63.3% of students did not smoke. Based on the results obtained, it was observed that second grade students, those with mothers who are highly educated and those who trusted themselved all the time had significantly high stress coping levels; students who chose their own profession, believed in themselves and did not smoke had significantly low levels of mental symptom indications.
CONCLUSION: In this study, the students were determined to posess averge levels of stress coping skills and they were found to be under low levels of risk in terms of showing phsychological symptoms. Programs to protect the mental health of students should be developed and implemented.
Key words: Keywords: Police Vocational School of Higher Education students, stress, coping with stress, mental symptom. Article Language: Turkish English
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