The truth about student stress - Healthy Life Essex

For students, September means freshers’ week. Cue making friends, meeting future flatmates and, of course, plenty of fun. But what about from October onwards? As the partying draws to a close and students are forced to face the truths of independent living, is the stereotype of the carefree student a reality? What is the truth about student stress?

To get some answers, we’ve looked at NatWest’s 2017 Student Living Index (SLI) to find out just how stressed students are feeling.

What are students feeling stressed about?

Even outside the world of students, money worries are commonplace. But the SLI shows that cash flow woes can start to impact life a lot earlier than you might expect. On top of the 45% of students reporting stress levels a 7/10 or higher, nearly 1 in 10 (9%) rate the stress of their degree a 10/10. The SLI also reported that 61% of students are highly stressed about their degrees.

What do the effects of excess stress mean for your health?

Stress is serious. According to Neil, it can lead to mental breakdown, emotional problems, self-harm and other health issues.

Neil cautions: “Stress has a profound impact on how your body’s systems function,” and adds that “the heart is the first organ in the body to experience stress”. This means effective stress management is essential for the long term health of one of the body’s key organs.

The accompanying “high blood pressure – the main cause of haemorrhagic stroke can weaken the arteries in the brain” too. But there are other serious implications. While he admits scientists are still working out the exact link, “put simply, stress makes your body more hospitable to cancer”.

With such serious implications, it’s clear that some effective tools for dealing with stress are essential.

So, Neil Shah, the Chief De-Stressing Officer at The Stress Management Society has shared some advice that students can use in their everyday lives to tackle their money worries head on. He also provided some healthy living tips to help students combat stress by harnessing the power of great lifestyle choices.

Top tips for handling stress

1. Draw up a budget

When it comes to money worries, forewarned is fore armed. Drawing up a budget doesn’t take long, so Neil advises to “set aside 30 minutes at the start of every term to put together a budget”. Once you work out how much you have to spend each week, it helps you avoid “a situation where you are short of money”.

2. Stick to your budget to take control of your money

While, according to the SLI, 65% of students attempt to budget, only 23% actually stick to it. So Neil’s second key tip to help reduce the stress of money matters is for students to really make every attempt to stick to the budget they set.

3. Find reduced stress in reduced prices

Neil advises students to “think about areas where you can reduce spend”. Whether that’s making the most of student discounts when shopping, cutting out the restaurant dinners, or switching to budget food stores – cutting back on outgoings will ease the pressure on the budget and the budgeter.

 Manage your time

Time planning is essential. Put things in order and they’ll seem like less of a confusing mess. For those students that feel overwhelmed, making a to-do list can help them work out which tasks to do first. Neil recommends making a list of things you need to do, and then prioritise them in the following order:

• Do now
• Plan to do
• Reject diplomatically
• Resist and cease (those things that students should ‘resist and cease’ are things that aren’t good for the body or time management. For example, while partying is fun, the temptation to go out on the nights before 9am lectures is something students should resist, or cease doing altogether).

5. Good sleep hygiene

Having a bed time and sticking to it might be difficult, but it will make you a better student. “Sleep is essential to maintain good mental and physical health,” Neil tells us. And because sleep “dramatically improves how your brain works”, the more healthy your sleep pattern, the more you should be able to concentrate.

6. Get daily exercise

Daily exercise is “the shortest route to a feeling of wellbeing and relaxation”. So get active with a walk, a run, or anything to get the blood flowing. Fresh air is great, but even an online exercise video will do the trick for students who are short on time.

7. A healthy diet

Cut out the junk food and cut up some fruit and vegetables. Eating fresh ingredients is important, and all those good nutrients actually “make your body more resilient to the effects of stress”.