Significados da morte entre estudantes dos Bacharelados Interdisciplinares da Universidade Federal da Bahia diante da pandemia de covid-19.

Abstract

Covid-19 and its ensuing pandemic have resulted in major public health issues. In this context, death stands out. According to the literature, death has had a direct impact on the lives of populations, especially Brazilians, causing emotional problems, for example. College students, hypothetically, have had to deal with the general implications of this context in addition to the specificities of student life. Death, therefore, is considered the subject, and college students are the audience. The research question that guided the development of this work was: what do students of interdisciplinary bachelor’s degrees at the Federal University of Bahia think about death during the Covid-19 pandemic? Therefore, the objective of this work was to investigate the meanings of death among students of interdisciplinary bachelor’s degrees at the Federal University of Bahia, Salvador campus, during the Covid-19 pandemic. The data collection instrument was a Free Word Association Test with the stimulus “Covid-19,” along with sociodemographic characterization. The test data were organized in the ExcelⓇ spreadsheet editor and processed using the IramuteqⓇ program. The analytical plan was based on content analysis, and sociodemographic data were analyzed using simple statistics. The research was approved by the research ethics board. Sociodemographic data indicate that the participants in this study were mostly cisgender, black women, without paid work, single, studying from the first to the fourth semester, with an average family income equal to or greater than R$2,424.00, which corresponds to two minimum wages at the time. The results indicated that the participants viewed death as a significant event in the pandemic, resulting from the process of contracting Covid-19, which brings suffering, generates fear, and produces indignation due to the belief that both authorities and "ordinary" social actors were irresponsible and reckless regarding the adoption of measures to prevent and control the pandemic. It is inferred that this result reflects the sociopolitical context of the country and reveals aspects of the students’ views on the situation. Finally, the study highlights how significant the phenomenon of death was in the lives of students and how critical they were of the federal government’s actions.