Important: Seeking Help
Please refer to the section of the Pre-Service unit about Mental Health and how to refer students for help. Remember that graduate students are also able to access resources via the campus Psychological Counseling Center.
Stress
Stress is undoubtedly a familiar word to those in academia. As a result, it is crucial for both students and professionals who study and work in higher education to learn how to manage their stress.
Students in the SWW Composition program will likely experience symptoms of stress during their academic careers. As a tutor, you can help students learn to understand and manage their stress by figuring out what stress relief practices work for them. But before a tutor can help a student manage stress, they must first be able to cope with their own stress.
CLICK on the link & read “An Overview of Stress Management” & watch the embedded video from Very Well Mind to learn how you can cope with stress
An Overview of Stress Management
Depression and Anxiety
The following video follows Matthew Lim, a student at Rice University. Battling depression and anxiety, Lim discusses his struggle to complete simple tasks on a daily basis. He explains the link between his performance at school and his feelings of self-worth.
WATCH “The Invisible Battle” & reflect on how you’ve witnessed or experienced mental health issues during your own college career
It is important for tutor’s to be aware of the widespread nature of chronic anxiety and depression, not only for their own well-being, but also for the students in the SWW Composition program.
To learn more about various types of depression common amongst adolescents & adults in the U.S. follow this link:
Depression: Facts Statistics and You
An article titled “Adult Attachment, Social Self-Efficacy, Self-Disclosure, Loneliness, and Subsequent Depression for Freshman College Students: A Longitudinal Study” discusses the commonality of depression amongst first year students in universities. Many SWW Composition students could likely be first year college students adjusting to college life.
“The first year of college is generally a stressful life period (Compas, Wagner, Slavin, & Vannatta, 1986), and most freshman college students experience some degree of acute loneliness and isolation (Berman & Sperling, 1991) and depression (e.g., Wolf, Scurria, & Webster, 1998). Indeed, Cutrona (1982) found that 75% of new freshman college students reported feeling lonely during their first 2 weeks at college. Research has shown not only that college student loneliness is positively associated with depression (Joiner, 1997; Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980) but also that students experiencing loneliness often do not possess the social skills or social competence necessary to begin and develop close interpersonal relationships (Jones, Hobbs, & Hockenbury, 1982). If the deficits in social competence experienced by lonely freshman college students can be identified, then ways of helping them enhance their social competencies in order to build satisfactory relationships might be developed, thereby decreasing feelings of loneliness and subsequent depression. In the present study, we were particularly interested in examining two indices of social competence: social self–efficacy and comfort with self-disclosure, which may constitute social competencies that protect freshmen from developing feelings of loneliness and subsequent depression during this stressful transition period.”
Exercise (optional):
Blog a free-write. Write about anything that is making you stressed or overwhelmed, or write about your day. Anything that allows your thoughts to flow freely.
WORKS CITED
