Student Research Report: Coping Mechanisms for Stressed-Out College Students
In Fall 2021, students in Dr. Emily Stark’s Research Methods and Design course completed multiple hands-on data collection projects. They were also assigned a blog paper where they discussed one of the topics they chose to research and explained their findings to a general audience. The goal of this assignment was to give students an opportunity to explore a different form of writing from APA-style research papers. Some of these blog papers will be featured here throughout the spring to showcase the students’ findings. Please feel free to contact Dr. Stark through the contact form on this site for additional information about this course or the assignments used.
By Cali Branch
An unfortunate aspect that comes with going to college is the stress involved with it. You want your experience in college to be fun and stress free, unfortunately, that is not the case for most students. Stress is not something that most people want to deal with and because of this, we try and find ways to get rid of the stress. There are many ways this can be done, and, in this paper, I will be mentioning a few ways that are helpful/effective in reducing stress.
Dr. Todd Thatcher, a behavioral health director of nursing, discusses the importance of family on helping deal with stress. Family brings you an increased sense of happiness and satisfaction which has shown to help reduce feelings of anxiety and stress. He also talks about how family can improve your overall mental health and makes us who we are (Thatcher, 2020).
During one of my classes at MNSU- Minnesota State University Mankato (Research Methods and Design), we conducted a survey where we asked college students what coping mechanisms seem to be most effective to them. The mechanisms tested were spending time with friends/family, listening to music, spending time outside, spending time with pets, meditation, exercise, and sleep. Our goal was to see which activity was the most effective at reducing stress. We asked out participants to rate each strategy on a 1-7 scale for effectiveness, with 1 being most effective and 7 being least effective. In the end, the most effective way to deal with stress was spending time with friends and family (2 out of 7) with sleep being a close second (3 out of 7). Dr. Todd Thatcher (2020) states “studies have shown that spending time with family can help reduce stress and anxiety, lead to a healthier lifestyle, and lengthen your life”. He also mentions other benefits to why spending time with family is important. For example, it improves your mental health, lowers risk of behavioral problems, boosts self-confidence, and teaches effective conflict resolution which are also important elements that can help reduce stress.
Sleep was the second most effective way to reduce stress in college students. Ellenbogen (2005) conducted a study on the cognitive benefits of sleep. He states that “sleep loss causes profound impairments in cognitive and behavioral performance”. Basically, saying without effective amount of sleep, your cognition will be affected negatively. This connects with stress because if you have an impairment in your behavioral performance, that can cause you to be stressed. People have a tendency be their best selves and perform to the best of their abilities and when they’re not able to do that, it can cause stress. Another reason why getting a good amount of sleep is important for not only college students, but the public as well. Students want to perform well in school, getting bad grades and feeling like you are not doing well can impact your experience greatly.
In the end, stress is not an easy thing to deal with and with this paper, I want readers to know effective ways to deal with it. I mentioned how spending time with friends and family is the most effective, and how sleep was second, that does not mean that the other mechanisms I mentioned are not equally as important. Everyone is different and I think trying out each tactic is important until you find one that fits you. Listening to music can be helpful to one person, but not useful to another. Testing out each strategy could be beneficial to you, one of them could turn out to be what reduces stress for you. I hope you do try at least one of the coping mechanisms I mentioned, even if you are not a college student, and I hope at least one works out for you!
References
Ellenbogen, J. M. (2005, April 12). Cognitive benefits of sleep and their loss due to sleep deprivation. Neurology. Retrieved November 24, 2021, from https://n.neurology.org/content/64/7/E25 .
Thatcher, D. T. T. D. (2021, August 6). The top ten benefits of spending time with family. Highland Springs. Retrieved November 24, 2021, from https://highlandspringsclinic.org/blog/the-top-ten-benefits-of-spending-time-with-family/ .