Recent surveys have indicated the high incidence of anxiety and depression in our young adults. In a survey of more than 153,000 freshman done through UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute results included findings that anxiety and depression are challenges for college freshmen with only about half of them reporting a high level of emotional health. Other studies have noted the physical manifestations of stress including sore throats, cough, flu, and upper respiratory problems. First year dropout rates have run as high as 20%. However, some colleges are trying to help with stress reducing activities such as massage therapy and yoga.
While almost everyone agrees that the high school and early college years present many challenges, I wonder if enough time and effort is spent to assist younger people to manage stressors in a capable manner. Massage and yoga are helpful techniques. However, there are many additional strategies and techniques available as part of a comprehensive package to equip young persons earlier to develop a sense of mastery as they face stressful circumstances. We discuss many of these strategies in our book on stress management (I Can’t Take It Anymore: How to Manage Stress so It Doesn’t Manage You; Paul G. Longobardi, Ph.D., and Janice B. Longobardi, R.N., B.S.N., P.H.N.), available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1542458056. For other information about the authors, book, and stress related topics, visit our website at www.manageyourhealthandstress.com.
However, for our present purposes, there are six strategies/techniques which would help your young people cope better and sooner so that so much psychological repair is not necessary in their adulthood:
1. Cognitive restructuring. This has to do with how we view the events in our life. Listen to the people who lament, "I'm so stressed out", or "This person/event is stressing me out". What that person is saying is that events control them and their view of their ability to cope successfully is low. In fact, it is why some psychologists advocate training primary school children in modifications of cognitive therapy. Why? I have worked with so many patients who incorporated negative/limiting beliefs about themselves as children such as "I'm incapable/unlovable/unlikeable because . . . someone said so". To be able to identify, challenge, dispute, and change these false beliefs earlier would have interdicted years of suffering and limitations in life happiness and well being and the need for psychotherapy. The young person who can develop a cognitive sense of self-mastery still will worry about final exams but will neither make themselves physically sick nor create a state of anxiety or depression.
2. Relaxation strategies. As noted earlier, some colleges are on the right path. Of course, there are available multiple strategies to include meditation, mindfulness, yoga, progressive muscle relaxation, and massage. Mindfulness and meditation approaches have been introduced in some graduate schools of business to assist future business leaders to manage their physical reactions. Might this not be as helpful at even earlier ages?
3. Time management. A source of stress for many adults is the failure to plan, prioritize, and set limits as to their work and possible interruptions. Do you take on too many obligations and fail to plan for interruptions, say yes to everything and everyone even when you don't want to? Do you then feel pressured to get done that to which you overcommitted? Good time management can help you as well as young adults who must juggle many school, social, and daily life activities in a newly independent life. I contend that teaching them such skills even before college would help prevent the frequent feeling of overwhelmn.
4. Self-affirmations. Acute stress can help rote memory, which is probably why so many "crammers" for exams actually do satisfactorily. However, if the task involves more complex problem solving increased stress interferes.
In the last several years there is new research indicating that self-affirmation can lessen the interfering effects of stress on problem solving. I prefer the definition that an affirmation is a statement that describes your goal in its completed state. For example, if the young person is trying to lose weight, their self affirmation might be that "I am feeling lean and powerful at my perfect body weight of 170 pounds". Creating and using self-affirmations daily can increase problem solving and goal attainment.
5. Exercise. Many observers decry the lack of physical fitness in the young. Yet, we all know that exercise and physical activity help improve general physical as well as mental health, leaving us with a sense of well being. However, less well known is that physical activity may facilitate the brain reorganizing itself in response to stress.
In recent research published in the Journal of Neuroscience, a team based at Princeton University reported that physical activity reorganizes the brain so that its response to stress is reduced and anxiety is less likely to interfere with normal brain function. Suffice it to say that the elimination of physical education in primary and high schools is not helping the ability of youth to gain the benefits of stress reduction.
6. Social support. Social support is the degree and quality of our connections with others. In the mental health field, it has long been known that even the presence of one confidante buffers to some extent the onset/degree of depression, from which many youth suffer. For the young people of today, they live in an era where frequently social interaction is defined in terms of connections on social media. Yet, without connection to real humans, there is increased risk for adverse physical and mental health outcomes. Social support moderates the effects of some of the other stress factors.
So let's go back to the struggling, stressed student facing final exams. I would suggest that a formalized stress management program in high school and in the first year of college would cut into the 20% drop-out rate noted above. Perhaps even more helpful could be to consider adapting stress management strategies and programs to both primary and earlier high school levels. In doing so, might we not cut into the hundreds of millions of dollars lost each year to stress related illness in adults in American business? Might we not improve quality of life for so many young persons and help them develop the sense of self-mastery which will facilitate their enjoyment and success in life? As the old saying goes, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". I think this is true in stress management as well.
Best of luck on your journey.
Dr. Paul Longobardi
For articles on these and related topics, please see my website at www.successandmindset.com