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Mental health issues and college students essay
Mental health issues and college students essay
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Mental Health Problems are on the rise among college students. In this excerpt from the American Institute of Stress, it states, “ “stress”, as it is currently used was coined by Hans Selye in 1936, who defined it as “the nonspecific response of the body to any demand for change” “. This excerpt, to my knowledge, is stating that stress is a response from the body when a change occurs. Considering the circumstances, it is reasonable to infer that the stress college students are feeling are from the many changes that they are going through whenever they reach their first year of college.
Imagine: you are a high school student who has been plucked out of their childhood and put into their newly acquired adulthood. College can be an amazing experience
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This is the first time in a young adult’s life that they have to worry about an increase of financial obligations. It is a huge change to go from having the opportunity to graduate high school free of charge and then having to figure out how you are going to pay for college. Many students take out student loans or scrape out enough scholarship money to make it by. Sometimes this just isn’t enough and you are left with an outstanding balance after financial aid and grant money. This leads to having to get a job to pay out of pocket or doing work study. Another contributing factor of stress that is placed on a college student’s shoulders are long hours. Going through college classes are tiring …show more content…
Along with homework, a college student might be placed in the position where they have to do work study, or get a job to support themselves. Considering how hard college classes are to get through, they would probably get a lot harder if you threw in a job on top of that. A heavy workload can quickly become a main source of stress, especially with college classes to go.
The last contributing factor a college student is faced with is leaving home. Most of the time, the college a student wants to attend is too far away to drive back and forth to, so they move on campus. Moving is generally a stressful situation for anyone. You are placed in an unfamiliar environment with new classes and new faces. This can become stressful when you start to miss home. Being the new kid at any school can always become stressful knowing that you don’t have any friends and it doesn’t feel like home.
There are actions students can take to reduce and overcome stress. Students need to know that the situation they’re in, is for the better. They need to
In the essay “College Pressures” by William Zinsser, Zinsser speaks about the pressures and anxiety that plague college students, all the while wishing that they had “a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step.” Referring to the 1979 generation of college students as “panicky to succeed”, he lists four of the following stressors for college students.
Everyone has experienced some type of stress in their life. Whether it has been from work, school, or trouble at home, stress is stress. If anyone had played sports in high school, you know the challenge of balancing school and sports. Imagine that stress, then multiply it exponentially. Everyone knows that college is a much more rigorous version of high school.
Imagine a student whose life is swamped with so many college classes and work duties that he or she must schedule some time to spend with family and friends. That is the situation that nontraditional college students go through every day of a school semester and still try to maintain a healthy family relationship. According to Jennifer Kohler Giancola and her colleagues, in an article titled “Dealing With the Stress of College: A Model for Adult Students,” Adult Education Quarterly, May 2009, “With an increase in nontraditional students attending college, there is a need to understand how work/school/life stress affects adult students” (246). Giancola and her colleagues’ statement are valid because nontraditional college students that work know how chaotic life is when multiple duties extend their entire schedule.
4 Giancola, J.K., Grawitch, M.J., and Borchert, D. (2009). Dealing with the stress of college: A
When any adolescent enters High School they are still young and on the search to find themselves. High Schooler’s often make bad decisions, but quickly see that these mistakes there to be learning experiences rather than to dwell on them. Often, for many students, High School does not present an extreme amount of stress, rather it is a a place to learn more about yourself. Once college hits, stress is the only thing on the mind. College students are always worrying about if they did their homework, if they have a big test coming up, if they studied enough, and if they even have enough money to pay their bills. So the key to college is to know that the fundamentals of college are different than high school, be responsible and reliable to yourself, do all your homework, and most importantly be respectful to your peers and teachers
National Health Ministries (2006). Stress & The College Student. The University of Illinois at Chicago. http://www.uic.edu/depts/wellctr/docs/Stress%20and%20the%20College%20Student.pdf
College students, especially freshmen, experiencing stress is normal, but it a concern that should not be taken lightly. It is easy for situations to spiral out of control, or for freshmen to feel like they cannot complete the next four years if things stay the same. It is important for students to keep in my mind that it is never too late to try one of these coping skills, and it is never too late to ask for
Since, college students tend to have a lot on their hands with balancing finals, family, and working; might be too much to handle. It can build up stress which can also build up anxiety. Students in poverty can relate to the stress because the affordability of college can put pressure onto themselves and family members trying to save extra cash so their children can earn a degree and a better education that they wish they had in their young adult life.
Driscoll, Emily. “Stress in College: What Causes it and How to Combat it.” Online posting. 31
Students who make the transition from high school into college have difficulty adjusting because many are not used to being on their own nor their new environment. Entering college, you come to understand that it is not the same as high school. There are crucial differences like the level of academic responsibilities, time management and scheduling, as well as the method of learning. College and high school are different in many ways but they both ultimately share the same goal in teaching students to learn.
Leaving home for the first time and going away for school can be very difficult for some people. In many cases for college freshmen this is their first time being away from their home and parents. Many times they get home sick and want to isolate themselves. They have to get into a new routine of going to school, and change can be very difficult. It is definitely hard to get into the swing of college. They have to navigate through classes in a new format while living away from all the comforts of parents. A college student’s life usually consists of attending classes, long hours of studying, working at a job (sometimes), and having a social life. Some students work at a job or study harder than others, but they are all trying to get degrees so maybe one day they will have meaningful and significant lives. It is a constant struggle for everyone who is trying desperately to make him or herself into a success. And every college student wants to be involved with something in order to further their education, or just have fun. There are lots of new opportunities out there. The struggle consists of demands on time, financial pressures, parental pressure and conflicts, interpersonal conflicts, managing freedom, peer and academic pressure and the transitional period to a new academic environment (Stanford University 4). All of these factors combined can cause emotional disturbances and one of the most common is stress.
Schooling is a very important aspect in our lives and one must go through many steps to gain a higher education. Two of these steps are high school and college. Although high school and college students aim for the same goal, which is acquiring an education and graduating, the demands, expectations, and social atmosphere extremely contrast.
Everyone deals with stress at some point in his or her life. Most people deal with it daily. As defined in the book called Principles and Labs for Fitness and Wellness, stress is, “The mental, emotional, and physiological response of the body to any situation that is new, threatening, frightening, or exciting” (Hoeger & Hoeger, 2012). This stress is caused by a stressor, which is also known as “a stress-causing event” (Hoeger & Hoeger, 2012). Stressors can take all different forms, from moving to a new town, having a baby, or even writing a paper (Boyd, Wood, & Wood, 2011). One major stressor in life can be going to college. If not coped with properly, these stressors can leave a person with too much stress that could end up harming them mentally and physically, such as developing an illness (Boyd, Wood, & Wood, 2011). There are several ways to cope with stress. Some healthy ways to cope with stress would be practicing emotion-focused coping, building time-management techniques, and practicing meditation.
Driscoll, E. (2013) Stress in College: What Causes it and How to Combat it, FOX Business, 73(12)
College is a time of extreme stress due to societal and parental pressures. College students have expectations they have to live up to in order to fulfill and satisfy the needs of both their parents and society. Stress is expressed through a variety of symptoms that can be hazardous to student’s physical and mental health. With such high expectations to do well during college, students may become sleep deprived, which impairs mental capacity, but sleep deprivation is only one of a vast array of symptoms. Stress is present in all aspects of life and there are multiple causes of stress, especially, during the college period which may present itself through many symptoms, but with stress, there are also various coping methods to help students deal with it.