Table of Contents
Abstract
Stress is a modern day problem that everyday humans can not seem to avoid. The negative effects of stress can and do affect an individual’s health and performance. As a result, people have all developed their own ways to manage stressful situations. Considering the fact that stress can be caused by many of the facets of daily life, this study will mainly focus on the mental stress that college students experience and the different impacts it can have on an individual’s health: mentally, physically, and emotionally. This research will provide information on different type of stress, its impact on health, and different strategies for coping with stress.
What is Stress?
According Selye, stress is the nonspecific response of the body to any demand. (Kalat, 2006). Meaning the response is always the same, no matter if the situation is described as pleasant or unpleasant, stress was just the demand for readjustment. His concept of stress stated that any experience or change in a person’s in life would produce stress. Thus concluding that stress could not be ignored. However, there was a lot of criticism about Selye’s stress definition not including anything about the change of environment around the person. (Kalat,2006). That is why it is also important to consider Lazarus’ definition of stress that is defined as “the relation between the person and the current environment.”
Many people believe that stress is always a negative thing, but that is not always the case. There are two different types of stress, eustress and distress. Eustress is the positive stress that motivates people to changes their behaviors and move closer to their chosen goals and aspirations while distress has more of a negative impact on a person’s wellbeing and health. If people felt no stress, there would be no compulsion to make meaningful changes in one’s life.
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Introduction
Life is full of demands and frustrations, riddled with hassles and deadlines. Everyone experiences stress as it is a natural part of human life. The human body itself has built a mechanism for responding to stress. However, during certain periods in one’s life a person may face more stress than normal. One of these periods is college life. College can be very stressful for some people, especially for those who are not used to having to handle a lot of responsibilities. Students spend most of their time trying to balance classes, projects, studying, a personal life, and, for some, work; that in and of itself is enough to make anyone feel overwhelmed. Therefore, damaging a student not only physically, but mentally as well. This paper will be focusing on the mental, emotional, and physical impacts of stress on college students, as well as examining and explaining ways for these students to cope with stress.
Mental Impact
Stress itself is not an illness, but there are connections between stress and mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. Anxiety is the most common mental health diagnosis in college students. According to Hilary Silver, a licensed clinical social worker, students who first enter college experience new lifestyles, meet new people, and are exposed to new, alternative ways of thinking. (psych central,2015) These aspects of college life, along with an increase in academic competitiveness, could have an impact on students; especially for those who already may have struggled with a mental disorder at an earlier phase in life.
For instance, a student who has obsessive compulsive disorder (better known as OCD) can find it difficult to share a room with a new person, while also trying to work on their time management skills when it comes to socializing, school work, and, in some cases having a job on or off campus. Not only that, but having anxiety can lead one to developing depression. If a student fails to receive the help that they need, they could begin to show some symptoms of depression such as insomnia, loss of appetite, feeling inadequate in certain or all aspects of their life, or even thoughts of suicide.
In response to student depression, Boston University’s Behavioral Medicine team published a three part series, titled “Mental Health Matters”, that provides current statistics and recommendations of treatment when mental stress happens in one’s life. Since life can sometimes cause people to experience mental stress, the team sought to help students understand when they should seek professional help for their symptoms. The director of BU’s Center for Psychiatric Research, Dr. Dori Hutchinson, wrote that “When your mood interferes with your ability to function at school, like when you’re finding you can’t get to class, and you don’t want to hang out with your friends or teammates, and you’re having difficulty concentrating because you’re feeling so distressed – that’s when you want to reach out for help.”
Emotional Impact
For a college student, being emotionally stressed can also play a huge factor in personal health. People who are emotionally healthy can better manage their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, both internally and externally. Meaning that they are able to manage emotional stress and give appropriate reactions to situations, preventing unnecessary and unhealthy stress. If the stress is severe enough, the student could be diagnosed with depression as the stress begins to take its toll on them mentally. Depression does not only affect a student’s mental state, but it can also add an emotional strain, preventing a student from fully reach their academic potential.
When in college, students are expected to balance school work, extracurriculars, various personal relationships, and even a job in most cases. If a student is not able to complete their work on time, it could cause them to become emotionally overwhelmed. For example, if a college student experiences the death of someone close to them during an important academic week like say, finals week, they will not be able to focus on their studies and in most cases, they may not even want to focus. Depression is associated with an increase in suicidal thinking and suicidal tendencies, and can also make a person more vulnerable to developing other mental illnesses. While it is okay to experience the normal range of emotions, consistent emotional deprivation in students can unearth a slew of hidden emotional issues that may have lain dormant in their previous environments only to be brought out by the intensity of a college environment (Guy Napolitana, MD, chairman).
Physical Impact
Stress plays a big role in controlling the physical aspects of our life. Our complicated modern lives are a testament to our ailments. Balancing relationships, school, social lives, and financial responsibilities are bound to have negative ramifications on our mental and physical conditions. The American Institute of Stress states that it is difficult to think of any modern ailment that doesn’t play a role in the development of more serious diseases. From the common cold to stomach ulcers, and from headaches to simple muscle pains it is important to note that these symptoms are are our body’s physical way of reacting to the environmental factors that affect our mental health, telling us that we need to do something about it.
When our body is stressed, it results in a tension throughout our muscles as a protective mechanism from injury. This mental link to physical pain is unique because our complicated social and financial issues in modern society are not an obvious threat to our bodies. Consistent stress over a long period of time can cause an increase in heart rate and blood pressure than can lead to major internal damage. For college students, anticipatory stress is to be expected; for some, it’s the schoolwork or the fear of failing and for others, it’s the fear of not being able to balance financial responsibilities on top of the mountain of other college responsibilities.
Coping Strategies
Coping is the effort made by the conscious to deal with personal problems. There are two different ways of coping. The first way is healthy coping, which is coping that is beneficial to dealing stress, doing things that will positively affect the situation. For example, some healthy coping techniques would be deep breathing techniques, listening to music, going for a walk, and even eating healthy food, which will help you physically as well as mentally.
The second type of coping is unhealthy coping, which is coping that is detrimental to one’s physical, mental and even emotional health. For instance, too much caffeine could cause a caffeine addiction, which would cause one to become completely dependent on caffeine. It would also disturb one’s sleep schedule, and cause them to wake up tired and in need of another caffeine jolt. Another example of unhealthy coping is emotional eating. This method is unhealthy because it can lead to blood sugar imbalances, which would cause stressful situations to be even more overwhelming, while also compromising health and causing excessive weight.
In conclusion, I would like to restate that stress in college students is a problem that is completely unavoidable. College will not only stress a student out physically, it will also stress them out mentally and emotionally in every way possible. It is up to the student to learn how to best deal with the stress that comes with being in college, and to know when to seek out assistance for dealing with said stress.
