More than one in six of the students at AU who participated in the 2014 study environment survey answered that they often or almost always experienced severe stress symptoms. According to the survey, during exam periods the number rose to one in three.

Over the past 18 months, university chaplain at AU Jens Munk has received invitations to give presentations on stress from both Medicine and the Department of Dentistry. As a key factor in the spread of stress the chaplain points to a culture that is in general focused on competition and performance, characteristics of society as a whole, but even more intensified at the universities.

"The entire university environment evokes a perfectionism because you are measured on a marking scale. This creates the right growth conditions for this special way of being in the world – a basic human condition in which you must always do better than you did last time and, at the same time, keep up appearances," he says. 

When only perfection is good enough

Already five years ago, based on this insight, Jens Munk started a discussion group focusing on perfectionism and feelings of inadequacy. Many of his discussions with the students revolve around how the young people feel they cannot live up to their own and others' expectations. And it is this type of pressure that can lead to unhealthy physical consequences in the form of stress. 

"The desire for perfectionism is closely connected to stress which, of course, has to do with you wanting to be a little better than you are and always trying to achieve a bit more than your mind and your body can manage. And you do not only need to be perfect in relation to your studies. This also applies to appearances and your social life. That can be a yoke to carry around," says Jens Munk.

The feeling of failure

Psychologist at the Student Counselling Service in Aarhus, Marianne Winter, nods in agreement with the student chaplain’s interpretation and emphasises that the causes of stress are complex and personal. In her daily work she meets students with sleep problems, depression, anxiety, social withdrawal and concentration problems. The problems often turn out to be related to stress about having to succeed in a competitive environment.

"Many of the students have experience of always getting high marks in their upper secondary school. At the university they meet others who might get even higher marks. So what – does that make you a failure? Some of them feel bad about it," she says, continuing:

"A typical response may be to increase their performance, often so much that it’s counter-productive and inefficient".

The transition from the upper secondary school to the university and the different ways of learning and studying can in itself be a factor that causes stress, says Marianne Vinter.   

"A special aspect of the university is that you have to find yourself and your own academic skills. I meet very many students who are frustrated by the Bachelor's project and then, later on, the Master's thesis. They really want someone to tell them what to do and how to do it. It’s really an apprenticeship in how to be self-supporting and independent," she says.

Say it out loud

According to university chaplain Jens Munk, stress can have the negative consequence that the student begins to isolate him- or herself. But to change the stress culture you need to do the opposite and dare to talk about the problem. The important thing is to create an environment where it is all right to admit that it can sometimes be hard to manage to do everything you want to as well as you want to, without this being perceived as a sign of weakness. He refers to his experience with his discussion group.

"When the students meet and talk about the tremendous pressure they all put themselves under, they discover that they’re not alone in feeling stressed, and that there’s not something wrong with them," he says.

No need to be a star

For the same reason, Marianne Winter encourages the students who are looking for help from the Student Counselling Service to make use of the social and academic environments at the university as much as possible, instead of sitting on their own worrying and having a guilty conscience about not studying enough.

And it is also important to be able to reconcile the fact that everyone is different and that you can be satisfied with a "normal" job, emphasises Marianne Winter. 

"Even if you’re in a class with the country's future leading politicians, elite researchers and leading cultural personalities," she says.

Translated by Peter Lambourne