More and more students suffer from stress

Seventeen percent of the students who have responded to the questionnaire almost always or often experience severe stress symptoms in connection with their daily life as a student. This figure is common to all of the faculties. When the students were asked the same question in the study environment survey three years ago, eleven per cent of them answered that they almost always or often experienced severe stress symptoms as a student.

What is stress?

In the survey stress is defined as the experience of symptoms such as e.g. social withdrawal, rapid heart beat, stomach aches, muscular tension, depression, restlessness, inability to relax, concentration problems and memory problems.

The students' own comments point towards different reasons for feeling stressed.

A student at Health writes:

"I am extremely tired and unhappy, I have stomach aches, nausea, I have fainted a couple of times, and I have lost 6 kg because of a poor appetite since last summer."

And a second student from the same faculty has the perception that the lack of cooperation between the students may strengthen the experience:

“There is between the students, in particular during the Bachelor, too much mutual competition in relation to support, and I believe that a large part of the stress that arises is due to the fact that the students are afraid to communicate that they are not 100 % on board and that they thus put pressure on both themselves and their fellow students unnecessarily. It turns into a competition to see who has read the most instead of a battle you go into together and support each other in. I think that you could perhaps avoid some students coming down with stress by inserting a short workshop or the like in an induction programme on collegial support and a discussion about how no one can do everything." 

Many students at Science and Technology point out that division into four quarters, two per semester, with many exams is helping to create a more stressful everyday life. As one of them writes:

"I’m very affected by the fact that we at science have as many as 12 exams per year. This requires a lot of preparation, both academically and mentally, and if you have a tendency to be a perfectionist, it also increases the risk of being stressed." 

Only 24 hours in a day

And at all faculties there are students who find it difficult to get their everyday lives to hang together when there are only 24 hours in a day. A student from Business and Social Science writes:

"The degree programme’s work load can be very stressful and I often find that I and my fellow students are completely run down, because you are under pressure and falling behind, even though you spend every day from 8:00-22:00 almost exclusively on your studies. In addition, many of us have work which is a necessity with the high housing prices, and that can be another stress factor." 

One of the students at Arts puts it this way:

"I have seen that people on the degree programme have got stress or depression especially during the third and fourth semesters, as the timetable includes many lessons and because you have to do a lot of preparation because you must perform in front of your fellow students. That’s why it is stressful if you have a period where you can’t face being put in the spotlight." 

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