Introduction:

The COVID-19 pandemic, in successive waves, can induce prolonged emotional disorders of stress, anxiety and depression, with greater psychological impact on health science students.

Objective:

To determine the psychological impact and levels of depression, anxiety and stress in the fourth pandemic wave in health sciences students.

Methods:

Cross-sectional study, conducted in Peru, from June to November 2022. It included 418 randomly selected university students. A virtual survey was used to collect socio-educational and religious-spiritual variables; psychological impact was considered when the student presented at least one of the disorders reported in the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). A descriptive analysis was performed and differences were evaluated with chi-square.

Results:

Of the participants, 82.5% had psychological impact; higher proportions were revealed by female students (82.6%), ≤ 20 years old (86.7%), studying and working (83.7%), cohabiting marital status (96.0%), obstetrics faculty (88.1%), atheist (91.7%), does not participate in religious activities (85.3%), does not consider herself a religious person (83.5%), does not consider herself a spiritual person (84.6%), practices weekly prayer (87.2%). The prevalence of depression was 63.2%; anxiety 78.5% and stress 48.6%.

Conclusions:

The fourth wave of the pandemic had a psychological impact on 8 out of 10 Peruvian health science students.

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