Stress On First Generation College Students And Options To Decrease Stress

Abstract

This paper explores about students who are in college and how they can be faced with many difficulties such as emotional concerns or mental issues and can even be faced with increased amounts of stress throughout their college experience. The article that is mentioned in this paper talks about a study and evaluation of various stress techniques that was done to figure out how to reduce stress levels in both undergraduate and graduate students in the college environment. There have been many stress reduction techniques out there in order to reduce stress for college students but many of these stress reductions were not really examined fully. In the main article there was a lot of research that was done on student stress to figure out what types of things that could be done in order to reduce stress on college students. Some examples of some of the things taken in consideration during the study were demographics, location, student type such as undergraduate or graduate level and various control groups that were used during the study. Some of the research and things that were done in this study proved to be successful to reduce stress in college students while some techniques were found to not be as effective overall in some instances of the study.

Stress on College Students and Options to Decrease Stress.

Many students experience some type of stress while in college because of the increased amount of responsibilities from transitioning from being a teenager to becoming a young adult in life and because of this transition many students are finding college to be more difficult compared to high school. In the main article about Meta-Analytic Evaluation of Stress Reduction Interventions for Undergraduate and Graduate Students; Produced by (Miryam Yusufov, Jennifer Nicoloro-SantaBarbara, Natalie E. Grey, Anne Moyer and Marci Lobel) at Stony Brook University, it elaborates and mentions many ways that could be done in order to reduce the amount of stress on college students through a study as well as through research. In the published study they used “meta-analytic techniques” to examine the effectiveness of interventions in reducing student’s anxiety and perceived stress in comparison with control conditions. The study also explored different student types between both undergraduate and graduate students to see if there was a difference in the amount of stress between both levels of student class. The study also included some of the different kinds of stress that specifically college students can face throughout their years while in college. The authors who created the study also came up with several hypotheses to determine and what they thought what purposed ideas would work successfully in the study. There were 3 hypotheses that were used to determine and come up with a result on which one would work best for reducing student stress in the college environment. (Yusufov, et al’s 2018 P. 134) Throughout the study and experiment there were many resources used on students who were put into several different control groups such as therapies, CBT training, relaxation methods etc. (Yusufov, et al’s 2018 P. 139) The data of the study and experiment was spread out to different countries and it wasn’t confined to a specific area or specific country to see how students all over the world could be impacted by stress while advancing their education at a higher level.

It has been proven throughout many studies and research that college students receive a lot more stress. The stress college students can receive can be based on many things whether it be exams, doing papers, having other responsibilities and many more. According to an article written by Patton O. Garriott and Stephanie Nisle at the University of Denver titled, Stress, Coping, and Perceived Academic Goal Progress in First-Generation College Students: The Role of Institutional Supports; First generation college students receive stress. For instance, first generation college students don’t have “parents to help them navigate the college environment based on social class.” (Garriott, Nisle 2018, P. 437) Because many students are just entering college for the first time, they may not have the support or know of the resources available to them in order to not be as stressed about being in college. Students who receive more support from family and know the resources available to them in college, especially girls are far less likely to have a lot of stress. (Garriott, Nisle 2018, P. 437)

The main purpose of the article I reviewed as well as the other references are for understanding more about students in college and no matter if they are just starting out or are used to the college environment many students can get stressed because of the increased responsibility and because of college being an opportunity to open a door for so many people to get into careers they would like or are interested in pursuing. There can be more things done in order to help reduce stress specifically in college students and by having more resources and options to help aid students during their college years and by doing these studies and having these options available, college can be a more relaxed and positive experience. The article points out many different reasons as to why students get stressed and ways everyone going through college can relive some of the stress they have.

References

Yusufov, M., Nicoloro-SantaBarbara, J., Grey, N. E., Moyer, A., & Lobel, M. (2019). Meta-analytic evaluation of stress reduction interventions for undergraduate and graduate students. International Journal of Stress Management, 26(2), 132–145. https://doi.org/10.1037/str0000099

Garriott, P. O., & Nisle, S. (2018). Stress, coping, and perceived academic goal progress in first-generation college students: The role of institutional supports. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 11(4), 436–450. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000068

oyraz, G., Horne, S. G., Armstrong, A. P., & Owens, A. C. (2015). Posttraumatic stress predicting depression and social support among college students: Moderating effects of race and gender. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 7(3), 259–268. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037967

Huffman, K., Dowdell, K., & Sanderson, C. A. (2018). Psychology in action. Hoboken: Wiley.