Psychology: The Role Of Stress In High School

Stress is something we all go through and over time our stress beings to build up. Many believe that stress starts to impact one 's life by the time they start middle school or the beginning of their teenage years. The transition from elementary to middle school into high school can be very intense. Students become highly influenced by their surroundings which makes them susceptible to descended into unhealthy coping mechanisms. At this point in time their lives are shifting dramatically, they will be encountering many different people. They are on their journey to self discovery which is beginning at this time, and will come with many “trials and errors” meaning that there will be a great number of phases before they begin to differentiate

Teens today are fighting a losing battle against stress. Schools pressure teens into competing in tests and even when applying to colleges. According to Noelle Leonard, PhD, a senior research scientist at the New York University college of Nursing "School, homework, extracurricular activities, sleep, repeat—that's what it can be for some of these students."

Stress has been an increasing issue regarding not only college students, but also student-athletes. Imagine the workload of any normal college student. Then imagine on top of academics, playing a sport which occupies the remaining available time within your day and weekend. This is the life of a student-athlete. Many student-athletes are able to handle the schedule and pressure that one faces in the collegiate environment, but some cannot.

Stress has been a top leading issue students have to face from standardized test for the past few years. Stress is a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances. Many people don’t know what stress really is, nor do they understand how to deal with it. This could be especially

First year students are faced with the enormous task of adapting to a new lifestyle and setting. This period is marked with a transition to an independent lifestyle, a higher standard of education, alterations in expectations of secondary education, academic focus, and alterations in support systems (Denovan & Macaskill, 2013). Role conflict is common among this population due to the various responsibilities that are thrust upon them. Conflict among the roles of school and family, along with additional roles such as work and peer relationships, creates stress on a student that may result in daily anxiety (Giancola, Grawitch, & Borchert, 2009). Students are faced with developing a skill that is often expected to be learned naturally, that of time management. While generally female students are better at time management, they still have higher levels of anxiety within the school setting. Academic stress is a strain on every student however, particularly affecting freshmen and sophomores (Misra & McKean, 2000). If anxiety were to accumulate on a daily basis, a student would begin to feel overwhelmed. If prolonged, negative psychological or physiological consequences could occur (American Psychological Association, 2013). Stress and anxiety are natural reactions to a stressor, yet to deal with the strain on the psyche and body humans have developed innate strategies to deal with the

Writer Alexandra Robbins writes a non-fiction expose following the lives of various overachievers at Walt Whitman High School. The purpose Robbins conveys in the book is that college admission expectations have made high school a very cut-throat environment, leading students who try to meet these expectations to have deteriorating emotional and mental health. Throughout the book Robbins uses strong forms of imagery to get across the idea that stress is negatively impacting many students health and uses shocking statistics to show that students are turning to self –harm and suicide to deal with stress.

In this society, students are constantly struggling with stress. The students in this generation have more anxiety, and higher stress levels than previous generations. Alexandra Robbins, the author of “The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids,” developed student’s stress as the theme throughout the book to put emphasis on how the rigor levels of schools increased causing students to overachieve. Yet while overachieving school goals, it led to student’s stress trying to juggle school and life at the same time while trying to get into a prestigious university.

It is anticipated that racial and ethnic-related stressors would significantly predict overall levels of perceived stress, and yield significant, negative impacts on academic performance (i.e., GPA). Furthermore, gender and other background variables (age, college entrance examinations cores, educational class status, and college aspiration) would also suggest that these variables were associated with perceptions of stress and academic outcomes for African-American college students. (p. 62)

The school system appears to be an appropriate place to make a connection with these children to emphasize the importance of self-care and education. High school students are especially at risk to the detrimental affects of stress as they are that much closer to being independent, therefore; the focus of the interventions will be for high school students. Interventions will focus on mindfulness, which has shown to be effective in the areas of stress reduction, memory improvement and increasing

Objective(s): Students will be able to evaluate effective strategies for dealing with stress and apply stress-management methods to manage personal stressors.

On the other hand a lot of stress can backfire completely and can be a horrible thing for you. Too much stress can even cause health problems for you. According to Mayo Clinic stress can affect your physical health as well as your mental health. For physical health it can cause head and stomach aches, sleep problems, chest pain and even a change in your se drive. Stress can also affect your behavior, it can cause your to have anger outburst, social withdrawal and might even cause you to turn to drugs and alcohol. Overall stress can make you an irritating or mean person to be around and this can affect students social lives in a negative

In college, students experience a great deal of stress for the first time in their lives. In the past, they experienced little stresses that came with growing up, but now they experience stress from the real world and it can be overwhelming. The stress in college is more serious than any they had experienced prior because it is a time that will define the rest of their lives. For many, this is the first time getting a loan, the first time having to care for themselves, the first time studying for massive exams, and the first time that their decisions will affect the rest of their lives. The main types of stress college students experience are financial stress, parental stress, class stress, social stress, and self-invoked stress.

Stress arises when the combination of internal and external pressures exceeds the individual’s resources to cope with their situation. For many young adults, college is the best time of life. These critical years can also be undermined by depression, anxiety and stress. Students are very likely to experience some or many stressors which may test their ability to cope: adapting to a new environment, balancing a heavy work load, making new friends, becoming more independent, and dealing with myriad of other issues. Looking from a closer perspective, the college students’ encounters a number of challenges in his day to day life, therefore the whole idea of an existing and vibrant college life is unveiled by these challenges which in turn contribute to

Stress refers to a dynamic interaction between the individual and the environment. In this interaction, demands, limitations and opportunities related to work may be perceived as threatening to surpass the individual's resources and skills. Stress is any physical or psychological stimulus that disturbs the adaptive state and provoked a coping response

Thus, stressors affecting students can be categorized as academic, financial, time or health related, and self- imposed (Goodman, 1993). Academic stressors include the student’s perception of the extensive knowledge base required and the perception of an inadequate time to develop it ((Carveth et al, 1996). Students report experiencing academic stress at predictable times each semester with the greatest sources of academic stress resulting from taking and studying for exams, grade competition, andthe large amount of content to master in a small amount of time (Abouserie, 1994). College students have many obstacles to overcome in order to achieve their optimal academic performance. It takes a lot more than just studying to achieve a successful college career. Different stressors such as time management and social activities can all pose their own threat to a student’s academic performance. The way that academic performance is measured is through the ordinal scale of grade point average (GPA). A student’s GPA determines many things such as class rank and entrance to graduate school. Much research has been done looking at the correlation of many stress factors that college students’experience and the effects of stress on their GPA. Hatcher and Prus (1991) referred to these stress factors as academic situational constraints. Their study took into account a variety of factors that can diminish a student’s academic performance. An undergraduate study done by Neumann et