Stress Coping Mechanisms in College Students: A Comprehensive Review

Stress is a significant concern among college students, impacting their academic performance, mental health, and overall well-being. This essay delves into the prevalence of stress and its correlates such as depression, anxiety, and financial concerns, referencing studies by Boss et al. (2016) and Dexter et al. (2018). It discusses effective stress management techniques including mindfulness-based stress reduction (Goyal et al., 2014), dietary adjustments (Gonzalez & Miranda-Massari, 2014), and coping strategies identified in Heikkila's research (Heckman et al., 2014). The role of social support systems is highlighted as crucial for mitigating stress effects, with Kumar et al. (2016) emphasizing environmental sustainability and holistic approaches. This essay underscores the importance of tailored interventions to address unique student challenges, promoting a balanced lifestyle that integrates academic demands with personal health and well-being.

Running head: ACADEMIC STRESS
Academic Stress
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Academic Stress
Introduction
Stress is the way or mechanism through which our bodies deal with any kind of
demand or threat. According to Beiter et al (2015), these demands or threats could be internal
or external and the body must respond in some way. Often, people tend to view stress as
negative and would like to stay far away from it. Most people would prefer to keep off
stressor and have no effective ways of coping when major threats or demands are put upon
them. Research has found out that stress is not always negative. When it comes in small
doses, stress could improve a person’s performance by keeping them under some pressure
(Boss, Bryant and Mancini, 2016). This pressure in return leads to more yield of results.
Stress generally affects all members of the society. This includes university students. Several
things happen and contribute to a student being stressed up. For instance, leaving the family
home, having an intense pressure to score high grades, trying to establish romantic or love
relationships and for some having to find a job while in school to cater for their fees and other
expenses. These are just a few of the possible contributors to stress among campus students.
In this report, the sources of academic stress among university students will be discussed. In
addition, effective solutions to deal with the stress will be provided.
Context
Stress is something that university students must deal with every day. By the time
students seek help conditions/situations that have resulted from stress, it is usually long after
stress have accumulated and caused some physical, emotional and psychological
deterioration. Most students are overwhelmed with stressful situations and fell as if there is
nothing they can do about it thus leading to the kinds of deterioration mentioned above.
Circumstances or events that result to stress are known as stressors. Stress is not only caused

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by negative things but also the positive ones. As a result, there are two kinds of stressors:
positive ones and the negative ones.
University students have unique kinds of stressful experiences. Certo (2015) defines
sources of stress as those circumstances or events that come in the way of people and cause
them to either change or adjust the plans they had. To understand the kind of stress that the
students undergo while studying at the university, a small-scale research was carried out at
the Thomson Rivers University (TRU). The aim of the study was to have a general
understanding of the most common types of stressors that students deal with in every day life.
With such an understanding, it would be possible to come up with possible solutions that
would effectively help the students cope well with stress. This report aims at discussing the
main causes of stress for university students and suggest some effective solutions. These will
be discussed next.
Discussions
In this section, the major causes of stress among students are going to be disused. The
first is relationships. The term relationship has been used here to mean the connections that
people have towards others. These connections could result from being related by blood,
marriage, etc. As Dexter, Huff, Rudecki and Abraham (2018) observes these relationships
could turn out to be a source of stress especially where the student becomes a victim of
relationship abuse. Abuse could be money related, sexual or physical and may manifest in
ways such as seclusion. Such abuse tends to show after some period and not immediately.
Relationship abuse and conflicts could be in form of conflicts with a roommate, interacting
with strangers and even family problems. The student results to spending a lot of time
thinking about the issue at hand and figuring a way of solving them. Consequently, the

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attention is diverted from academic work which is the University’s main goal and core
business.
The second major source of stress for students is personal factors. These have proven
to cause so much stress to students than one can possibly imagine. They also play a very
important role in the various aspects of the life of a student. These factors are different for
each student and result in different set of perceptions attitudes and behaviours. Personal
factors take different forms which all tend to stress up the student and divert their attention
from academics. Some of these forms are going to be discussed next. One is change in living
environment. having to move from home to school and meeting new people who are so
diverse may cause stress. Another form is change in sleeping habits. Campus students change
their sleeping patterns drastically especially due to academic workloads leading to stress.
According to Gonzalez and Miranda (2014) health problems and poor eating habits also
significantly contribute to stress. The other personal factors include financial difficulties
which a significant number of students go through and combining job with studies.
(Heckman, Lim and Montalto, 2014).
The third major cause of stress are academic factors. These are activities within the
curriculums that students go though on daily basis. Along the way, they potentially cause
stress. For instance, increased class work load. Such an increase means that the student must
deal with more than they can comfortably handle. Since they want to get good grades,
students will create tight schedules to deal with these assignments, projects etc (Ju, Trebinjac,
Bannon and Papaconstantinou, 2017). Since the tasks are enormous, they end up messing
with them. Consequently, there is poor performance which is completely different from the
expectation of the student. This results to frustration and stress. This is especially true where
the students must attend to tasks of different courses each of which requires their attention.
Matters are made worse by the fact that most students will have to do this after a tiresome

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day. Another potential cause of stress to students is language difficulties. The student’s
ability to communicate be it I n examinations, assignments or even presentations is crucial to
the process of learning. Where the student has no proficiency in the language being used in
teaching and learning, they may become frustrated and end up being stressed up.
Procrastination is another cause of stress in this category. This is where the student keeps on
pushing tasks to a future date and time instead of promptly working on them. Eventually, the
students find themselves with so much to do that it would be so difficult for them to beat the
deadlines. Consequently, the student becomes stressed up. Gunnar and Vazquez (2015)
demonstrate that this is a significant contributor to stress among campus students. The other
academic factor of stress is examinations. Students prove that they deserve a good grade
through exams. Many students do extensive research and reading during exam periods to be
well conversant with all the course requirement. Often, the pressure is too much and leads to
stress. Missing lectures and frustration due misunderstanding are other potential causes of
stress in this category.
The final major cause of stress to be discussed will be environmental factors. One
such factor is lack of vacation or breaks. In situations where students stay in school for long
periods before a break, their cognitive ability may become poor. Consequently, the students
become tired and no longer feel like studying. In the long run, the students will become
stressed up since they lack the zeal to continue studying and learning (Levine, 2017). Another
environmental factor of stress is computer problems. The modern society have evolved to an
extent where almost every activity requires the use of computer technology. While this has
brought a lot of good, it might be a cause of stress to students who do not have the
appropriate computer skills. Most of the curriculum needs in the modern day require some
computer skills for implementation. Such students could have challenges, feel inferior and
result to stress (Zhao, Lei, He, Gu and Li, 2015). Another factor is divorce between parents.

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Some life occurrence may have major blows especially in the lives of students. When divorce
occurs, most students become unhappy and start figuring out how good thing would have
been if the parents were still together. With time, this unhappiness accumulates and results to
stress. Last to be discussed in this section is future worries. Thinking about the future breeds
worries in the minds of many students. The students can’t help imagining how it will be after
school. This could be especially aggravated in situation where getting a job is not an easy
(Spielberger, Sarason, Kulcsar and Van, 2015). The hope of most students is get a job after
school and impact the society positively. When the thought that this might not happen creeps
their minds, they tend to be stressed up.
Stress Management Techniques
As seen above it is practically impossible to avoid stress. If not monitored and
managed stress could have dire consequences. for instance, it could lead to deteriorated
physical, emotional and psychological well-being. Stress can make one chronically unhappy
and lead to depression. The good news however, is that stress can effectively be managed.
This is very important for students as it would come in handy to help increase their level of
happiness and have better grades. There are some ways in which a person can ensure that
they deal with stressors effectively to avoid being stressed up. Some of the ways are going to
be discussed next.
There are some measures that have been put in place by the university that contribute
to stress relief. These activities include international days. During these days students and
persons from different institutions and parts of the world gather together. During international
days the student gets a chance to interact with and learn from persons of diverse cultures and
backgrounds. As a result, the student has some time off class where they do not have some

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workload and assignments to think about. The student’s mind is refreshed and any stress that
they might have is significantly reduced. During such events there are also performances that
are done and some speakers who talk to the gatherings. Most of the activities are not
academic related. Consequently, it could be viewed as a time when the student has some time
on their own to interact, learn and have fun.
The other activities besides the international days are gaming and exercise. The
Tournament capital centre provides facilities for gaming and exercise. These include gyms,
pools and arenas. Exercise and gaming are some of the best methods that a student can use to
get relief from stress. Psychologists have described exercise as meditation in motion and
helps in optimal bodily functioning. In addition to relieving stress, these activities help one to
keep fit and prevent some chronic illnesses such as diabetes and some types of cancer whose
occurrence would have aggravated stress. Exercise relieves stress in the following ways:
increasing the production of endorphins which are endorphins that lead to euphoric feeling, it
is meditation in motion and helps one forget previous awful experiences and helps improve
mood and self-confidence. Some other ways through which the student can relieve stress are
going to be discussed next.
Meditation is one of the other methods. This could be a very effective way of
managing stress especially where mindfulness is involved (Sharma and Rush, 2014). This
means completely leaving the worries of the future and awful past experiences and focus on
what is happening now. It might not be easy when starting as one might wander off but with
regular practice, it becomes a great way of relieving stress. When done periodically,
meditation strengthens the region of the brain associated with joy and relaxation (Goyal et al,

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2014). It would therefore be true to conclude that regular meditation is a great and effective
way of attaining stress relief.
The other way through which a student can get stress relief is through getting social
support (Kulsoom and Afsar, 2015). As the famous adage goes, a problem half shared is half
solved. Psychological studies have shown that when a person shares something troubling
them with a trusted person, the chances of recovery from the troubling situation significantly
improves. Social support could be gained by calling a friend or even sending an email. The
key in this is sharing with someone who can be trusted. When the issue is enormous, it might
be important to seek help from a professional counsellor (Powell and Enright, 2015). These
are trained on how to help people and one of their professional duty is to maintain
confidentiality. It could therefore be a good idea to get professional help from them.
Another method of relieving stress is deep breathing. Research has demonstrated that
deep breathing clears the mind and releases any tension that the body might have. According
to Greenberg (2017) we tend to breath shallowly when anxious or under stressful situations
and most of the times we do not even notice it. The shallow breathing may cause fewer
oxygen to get to the lungs and consequently other parts of the body. This may aggravate the
stress further. Deep breathing alleviates this stress. The deeper a breath is, the less anxious
one is.
The last method to be discussed will be taking a break from the stressor. This might
seem difficult, but it is one of the strategies to attain relief from stress. This could involve
getting away from a big work project from some time, or even walking away from a crying
baby. Once you get away from the stressor, it is helpful to do things that one enjoys such as
listening to music (Seaward, 2017). This is different from running away from the real issue. It

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is just taking some time off and then going back to deal with the real issue once composed. It
is a great way of attaining stress relief.
Conclusion
As seen from the observations above, stress is any circumstance or event that poses
some threat or demand upon us. Stress can be caused by either positive events or negative
ones. It is practically impossible to completely avoid stress. With proper management of
stress, one can lead a normal and fulfilling life. University students have a special set of
stressors that significantly affect their academic life. These include: relationships, for
example sexual abuse or financial exploitation by someone who the student has some form of
connection; academic factors such as procrastination, heavy work load and examinations;
personal factors such as drastic change in sleeping habits and a change in the living
environment and environmental factors such as inadequate skills of computer use, parents’
divorce and worrying about the future. The good news is that studies have established
effective ways of managing stressful situations and leading satisfying lives. The methods of
stress relief include meditation, seeking social support from a trusted person or even a
professional counsellor, taking some time to be away from the stressor and deep breathing.
Recommendations
First, the university management should make more room for courses that pertain to
stress management and organize forums and campaigns to sensitize the students about
effective methods of managing stress. Secondly, the student leadership should collaborate
with department of sports and games to organize games and social programmes for students.
Thirdly, there should be close interaction and collaboration between students and the
academic stuff when planning on how to go about the intensive courses of the semester.
Fourth, guidance and counselling unit should be integrated with the university management

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to offer help to students. Preferably, some students should be trained on how to help their
peers as this has proved to be more effective. Fifth, students should have enough time for
sleep and exercise. In addition, good eating habits should be encouraged. Sixth, during
lectures that take long hours, some creative games could be used to engage the students. This
will help them have some relief and increase their attention. Lastly, students should create a
good balance between studying and working to avoid stress.

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