Social Anxiety On College Students

1425 Words3 Pages

Carter Gale
College Student Development
INTRODUCTION
During college, emerging adults can face many new experiences-- some good, some bad. However, for many students, these experiences prove to be quite stressful. Today, with the increased pressure to perform being placed on students, anxiety is an ever-growing problem for today’s emerging adults that has effects lasting into later life. Anxiety during college can cause lower performance in academics, social isolation, risk to health, and a general degradation in one’s well-being that can last well into adulthood. It is important to understand the effects anxiety have on college students because, as stated by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America: anxiety affects around 18.1% of …show more content…

However, in individuals with social anxiety, this can be difficult to handle. In their study, Brook and Willoughby (2015) wanted to find out how social anxiety affects academic success in college students across multiple years. In order to achieve this, 942 Canadian students with a mean age of 19 were studied across three years. What Brook and Willoughby (2015) found is that individuals with above-normal amounts of social anxiety were negatively associated with academic achievement. Brook and Willoughby (2015) deduced that the factors of social anxiety that caused academic troubles were because of an anxious individual’s tendency to not interact with peers or professors in fear that their opinions would not be valued. The inability to ask for clarification on directions, get help on a homework problem, or work efficiently in a group can quickly cause a university student’s grades to drop significantly. With the anxiety of social situations causing a drop in academic performance, and academic performance causing anxiety, it becomes a vicious cycle that over time can even manifest …show more content…

It has been proven through many studies, as indicated in the research described above, that college students are at a higher risk of developing anxiety. More specifically, due to the nature of college life, coupled with the pressures to succeed, students have difficulty avoiding the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional effects of anxiety. The interactions between these four domains of development is a complex cycle of small problems being amplified into seemingly larger ones that reduce a person’s ability to easily manage day-to-day life. This In this complex cycle, understanding what triggers anxiety, ways to control anxiety, and ways to treat anxiety are very important in a student’s ability to be more successful and to be healthier in the years after college. As someone currently struggling with anxiety, this essay gave me knowledge about specifically how anxiety is impacting me and allowed me to take a step back and analyze my own feelings. In conclusion, anxiety in college students is a serious and prevalent disease that can have lasting, negative effects on one’s well-being for many

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