https://drive.google.com/file/d/19Sq3EK0qq3E5x2VHeQ52Jz9yMtWl1D8Y/view?usp=sharing
Today we are going to talk about stress among students. Indeed, stress is a concept that has been extensively studied in psychology in different populations. First we will define stress and then we will consider a study that shows us how students are affected by stress.
According to Lazarus and Folkman, stress is (defined as) a particular relationship between the person and the environment, a relationship that is evaluated by the individual as exceeding his resources and threatening his well-being. There are two types of causal antecedents to stress: on the one hand, those linked to the individual, such as personality, knowledge previous experiences, and value system, and on the other hand, those that are external to the individual. There are different phases in the stress process. First there is the assessment of the threat, then the assessment of the resources available to deal with it, then the implementation of a coping mechanism and finally the short and long term effects.
I will now present a study conducted by Tavolacci and his colleagues in 2010 (two thousand and ten) on student stress. The objective of the study was to measure the perceived mental stress among students in higher education and to identify the risky behaviors associated with stress. To achieve this, they conducted a cross-sectional study, in which they surveyed students from seven different campuses via an online questionnaire. They collected 508 (five hundred and eight) responses. The questionnaire addressed several topics including: age, gender, having a scholarship, having a part-time paid job, alcohol, tobacco and cannabis use, eating disorders and sports participation. Perceived stress level was measured by the Cohen score.
The results show that student stress mainly affects women, as well as students who do not participate in sports. In addition, students who misuse alcohol are more impacted, as are those with a tendency to cyberaddiction. The final factor that promotes higher levels of stress involves those at risk for eating disorders. All other factors, such as scholarship, partial paid employment or smoking cannabis, are not directly related to stress.
Stress levels are high among students. It is certainly the cause of some addictive behaviors. It is therefore important to have a better knowledge of the factors that trigger stress and to know its repercussions on the course of study, its evolution and the different management mechanisms developed spontaneously by students. Many other studies exist on the subject and show how stress is very present in our society.
To cope with stress, individuals often use coping strategies, which are self-protective behaviours. Here are three types of coping strategies to combat stress. There is the problem-focused coping. This strategy aims to reduce the demands of the situation and/or increase one’s own resources to better cope with it. Emotion-focused coping includes the individual’s various attempts to regulate the emotional tensions induced by the situation. The last strategy is the search for social support: it corresponds to the subject’s efforts to obtain the sympathy and help of others.
This chronicle is finished for today, I thank you for your attention, see you soon !