Mental Health and Quality of Life in the Context of Health-Promoting Universities in Brazil: An Integrative Review

Abstract

Objective: To identify strategies, practices, and challenges described in the literature regarding the actions of universities belonging to the Brazilian Network of Health Promoting Universities and the Ibero-American Network of Health Promoting Universities, focusing on the mental health and quality of life of university students. Method: This is an integrative literature review. The search was conducted in August 2025 in Google Scholar, SciELO, and PubMed databases, as well as in the CAPES Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations and institutional repositories, using the descriptor “health promoting universities” in Portuguese, covering the period from 2015 to 2025. Studies explicitly addressing the Health Promoting Universities movement and its interface with policies, actions, and health conditions in higher education were included. After screening 15,100 records in Google Scholar and 1,017 in repositories, a final corpus of 13 studies was obtained. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis, according to Bardin, and organized into three axes: institutional policies, practices, and challenges. Results: Institutional health promotion policies were found to be incipient, fragmented, and poorly integrated into management instruments. A wide range of practices in mental health, physical health, healthy environments, and extension activities was identified; however, these were characterized by discontinuity, low intersectoral coordination, and reliance on isolated initiatives. Structural challenges included academic overload, psychological distress, inadequate infrastructure, low student participation, and lack of monitoring and evaluation. Conclusion: Health promotion in the university context is an expanding field, still weakly institutionalized, requiring clear policies, intersectoral governance, active participation of the academic community, and research to monitor its implementation and outcomes.