Dating violence and its relationship with anxiety, depression, and stress in young Andalusian university students

To analyze the prevalence of dating violence (DV) and its relationship with states of depression, anxiety, and stress in young Andalusian university students.

Cross-sectional descriptive quantitative study in 8 public universities in Andalusia. Data collection was carried out from September to November 2020 through a self-administered questionnaire that included sociodemographic variables and variables related to dating violence, depression, anxiety, and stress. For the analysis of the data, descriptive and nonparametric tests were performed through the U Mann-Whitney and Spearman Rho for the relationship between variables.

Thousand ninety-one young university students from Andalusia participated. The most prevalent DV was psychological, including behaviors related to cyberbullying, control-surveillance and psychoemotional (68.42-42.90%), followed by sexual (16.68-3.57%) and finally physical (5.60-1.92%). Statistically significant differences were shown according to sex and DV, where girls scored higher in being victims of behaviors related to cyberbullying, control-surveillance and sexual, and boys in perpetrating psycho-emotional, physical and sexual violence. All types of DV showed significant and positive correlations with depression, anxiety, and stress, except physical DV perpetrated with stress.

The high prevalence of DV and its relationship with mental health show the importance of conducting research on this line in the educational field, since it is a space that guarantees egalitarian relationships and promotes health.