Statistics

From the common cold to the flu, college students encounter various health problems.  However, research studies have shown that college students most commonly deal with stress.  In a survey administered earlier this year by the UCLA Higher Education Institute, only 52% of the 200,000 college students surveyed rated their emotional health as high, a drop from 64% in 1985 and 55% in 2009 (Lloyd 2011).  These statistics are quite daunting because stress, when managed improperly, can have a negative impact on college students.

Two years ago, The Associated Press and mtvU, a television network for colleges and universities, conducted an experiment and found that college students who had difficulty managing stress had trouble concentrating and sleeping, and lacked academic motivation.  In addition, they discovered that these college students often expressed wanting to do drugs or alcohol to relax and often had thoughts of suicide (Presnall 2008).   These results were later confirmed by a study in 2010 designed to document how college students cope with stress on a daily basis and whether the coping strategies used were associated with more or less alcohol consumption.  In this study, researchers found that many college students use alcohol as an avoidance-oriented coping strategy (Aldridge et al. 2010).  With these findings in mind, one may wonder why college students are so stressed.  Research theories hypothesize that the primary cause of stress for college students stem from problems with time management, setting priorities, financial stability, family expectations, personal relationships, campus crime, and uncertainty about the future (Lewin 2011).