Students see rise in stress levels, studies indicate

By Jackie Miller, For the Michigan Daily News. December 3, 2014

Now that the Thanksgiving festivities have ended, students are feeling final exam stress becoming more acute every day. The impending deadlines for papers and looming tests have many feeling the pressures associated with this hectic time of year. “I think that it’s just a lot of time crunches all at once, like a lot of time management problems,” said LSA junior Sarah Zaccardo. “It’s kind of like the last of it all, so anything that happens you can’t really change afterwards. It’s like the determining factors.” In addition to all of the expected stress from finals, LSA junior Patrick Schoeps said there are still the usual, non-seasonal stresses to worry about, such as exercising. Such stress factors have a variety of effects on college students. Nationally, 17.3 percent of undergraduate and graduate students reported having depression, 7 percent reported anxiety and 6.3 percent reported serious thoughts about attempting suicide in a 2013 study by Daniel Eisenberg, an associate professor of health management and policy in the School of Public Health and the director of the Healthy Minds Network. Furthermore, stress and anxiety are the top two reported impediments to academic performance for college students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, according to recently released results from the National College Health Assessment survey, administered by University Health Services last February. Between 2010 and 2014, the proportion of students reporting stress as an academic impediment rose from 25 to 31 percent and anxiety rose from 17 to 22 percent. The number of undergraduate students listing depression as an academic impediment also increased from 10 percent in 2010 to 15 percent in 2014. Eisenberg said depressive symptoms have been rising steadily not only for college populations, but also more generally for all younger demographics. He attributed this trend in part to a shift in the social pressures felt by many college students. “(There is) the idea that young people increasingly are motivated by extrinsic factors like social approval, status, money, and that’s probably exacerbated by social media and the interconnectedness that we all have now as opposed to more intrinsic factors like people’s values, their morals, their self-esteem, and doing things that make us feel good based on our own values,” Eisenberg said. “That’s the sociological explanation, which seems to make sense from people’s observations, but is difficult to prove.”

How College Students Deal With Stress Students Under Pressure - APA Percentage of college students who presented with depression, anxiety or a relationship problem 1 in 5 college students are constantly stressed Life of a College Student is Pretty Awesome, Report Reveals Eisenberg conducts an annual survey across more than 100 colleges and universities that seeks to assess mental health-related issues such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse, as well as how well students utilize campus resources.