College Students and Stress – An Informative Guide

According to research, college students are at risk of being affected by stress than anyone else. Exposure to many conditions and factors during the college times makes it very difficult to identify the phase when these young minds fall victim to stress. Many psychologists also find the increase in the number of crimes and violence in college students a direct link to stress, especially involving the first and second year students.


The Source Of Violence In College Students

Now-a-days, we regularly come across news related to high school violence that makes sensational headlines, shooting being the most common in the nation. Theorists believe that these crimes are just a result of the negatives these students have experienced in their lives. Some tragic events have made researchers more inquisitive to learn about the effects of stress on such young individuals and also concluded it to be a reaction on an event in the name of expressing anger, anxiety or depression. In fact, college students have been found to overreact on a situation compared to older groups. It has been proved that violence developed in college students is directly related to the stress experienced by them which mutually leads to the development of many other anti-social factors.

What The Psychologists Have To Say

Pamela Jackson, a social psychologist and researcher from the Duke University, claims that a disturbed psyche and constant exposure to depressing events are the two major factors that create a correlation between violence of college students and stress. In her research, she conducted a survey that involved 863 undergraduate students. These students had to measure their level of anger or hostility, anxiety and depression with 50 incidents that has happened to them ranking their mental health with a quantitative value.

The review showed many sub-factors with negative influence like close or romantic relationship, racial discrepancy, school events, academic performance, physical assault and lack of peer attention, all leading to psychological distress. Affinitive opportunity and being physically approached tops the list of negative sources and forms a factor to increase stress in college students and many young minds who fail to cope up with such factors in due course take the help of violence to vent their feelings.

Stress In College Newbies

According to Pamela Jackson, she concludes from her research that the fresher who is in the initial years of college experiences more stress than the senior college students. From the survey conducted, it was noted that college freshers reacted more emotionally troubled from the negative situations than the senior students in college. However the review also hints that sophomores and juniors are also affected deeply due to stressful life events, but the freshers have been proved to be at more risk than any other college students.

Stress Indicators In College Students

In the view of many researchers’, anger and aggression are the most common reactions that college students experience after a stressful and negative event in their lives. Rather their level of anger and hostility is more in comparison with other common symptoms like depression and anxiety to release their stress. These young individuals start to react violently mainly due to affinitive opportunity that would have left a negative impact on the young mind. The shooting tragedy of 1997 by Luke Woodham at Pearl High School can be quoted as a good example as it was a mere reaction of a breakup with a girlfriend.

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