All Posts Tagged With: "stress"

Doctors blame exam anxiety, heart condition

Photo courtesy of rileyroxx on Flickr

Jairaj Chandran, 18, was 10 minutes into his high school theology exam in Cambridge, U.K. when he felt his chest getting tight and he started to having trouble breathing. He asked to step outside.

“My legs and fingers were numb. It was terrifying,” he told The Sun. Luckily, he knew about his existing heart condition and asked to be sent to the hospital. It was, as he suspected, a heart attack. Surgeons performed emergency surgery to replace a valve, leaving him with an eight-inch scar.

“The doctors said it was probably stress related and I was nervous because theology was one of my worst subjects,” said Chandran. The university used earlier marks to determine his A-grade in the class. He plans to study politics in Australia.

Time off in November to help students relieve stress

Ryerson University is the latest to approve an additional reading week to take place in the fall. On Wednesday, Ryerson’s senate voted to shorten the fall semester from 13 weeks to 12 beginning in 2012.

At the University of Alberta, the students’ union will be polling students in an upcoming referendum to gauge support for starting the semester a week earlier, to compensate for the break. The purpose of the break is to give students the opportunity to relieve stress. “Our student counselling services had last year the highest usage numbers in November so in recognizing that February winter reading weeks are established to deal with the mental health there, November seemed like another time to take a look at,” says Nick Dehod, University of Alberta’s student president.

Several universities have implemented fall breaks in recent years, including the University of Ottawa, Trent University and the University of Toronto. Wilfrid Laurier University is examining the idea and the University of Calgary has had a fall break for years.

Christmas vacation isn’t a vacation yet.

My last exam was almost a week ago, on December 15th, but my Christmas vacation hasn’t even started yet.

When I found out that all five of my exams were in a row, right at the beginning of exam period, I couldn’t decide if I was happy, or on the verge of developing a nervous tic.

On the one hand, writing exams sooner means less time to study. Not to mention, when your exams are literally back-to-back, one day after another, it’s harder to divide up your study time properly. How can you study for Biochemistry when Embryology is the day before? And how can you study for Embryology when Molecular biology is the day before that? And how can you study for Molecular biology when… well, you get the point.

On the other  hand, all my exams were over in one shot. And my Christmas vacation started a bit earlier than usual.

Except it didn’t. Until my final marks are released tomorrow, I can’t sit back and enjoy my vacation.

I’m stuck in post-exam purgatory.

-Photo courtesy of alancleaver_2000

I mean, I am excited. Or I was. Abject fear has been slowly overtaking excited as my dominant pre-law school emotion.

Blogging might be light in the next two or three weeks as I enter what the French call le panic mode.* For one thing, I’m departing Edmonton by car for Victoria in slightly more than a week and I have packed … (looks around apartment) zero things.

So that constitutes, rough estimate, about 20 per cent of my stress. The rest resides in this little knot in my stomach that explodes into full-body terrors, usually right after someone says something like “School starts so soon! Are you excited?”

I mean, I am excited. Or I was. Abject fear has been slowly overtaking excited as my dominant pre-law school emotion as orientation day approaches. This is normal, probably, but it’s not enjoyable.

For example, the other day I was talking with UBC law professor David Duff during which he proffered this little nugget:

“At the end of the day, when students get to law school, they’re all in the same pool. There’s always this phenomenon whereby law students have always been above average and, by definition, half of them are not going to be above average.”

I think I managed to continue talking, but there’s also a definite chance I stopped conversing and devolved into making tiny rodential squeaks as my brain was like “Me. It’s me. I’m totally going to be below average. Oh my God. What am I doing? I’m going to spend $–,— just to fail and I’m going to have to move in to my parents’ basement and live there for all eternity waaaahhhhhhhhh.”

I’m sure I felt this way as a 17-year-old heading across four provinces to start my undergraduate degree, but I don’t remember, because in my own mind I can fold the space-time continuum so that 17-year-old me is also 25-year-old me who is imbued with the knowledge that undergrad was not only completely achievable but amazingly fun and therefore has no fear, and tells 17-year-old me this and we high-five in my memory and retroactively erase all the fear and doubt I had eight years ago, leaving me only with my current fear and doubt.

Well, that, and Google. If you type something along the lines of “Law school won’t kill me, right?” you can turn up a treasure trove of living, breathing current-and-former law students willing to help out with friendly advice. Some of my favourites are here, here, here and here.

Also, advice is also welcome in the comments section. For the meantime, I’m going to start packing … or curl up in the couch in the fetal position. TBD.

*La mode panique? That can’t be right, because I think that means the panic fashion. Oh, small town Alberta high school French. You have forsaken me.

Three years in, I’m starting to think the library isn’t how I want to learn about the world

I was walking to my friend Hannah’s house last night, eating my dinner – a pear in one hand and a samosa in the other. My bag – full of notebooks and texts and power cords – was thudding heavily against my back, but I barely noticed.

My attitude towards hygiene has gotten pretty defeatist (“I’m just going to smell again tomorrow anyways”), my exercise now consists of running for the bus, and I no longer have even the contents for a modest grilled cheese in my fridge.

Sounds like another November, when students everywhere start churning out assignments at a frantic rate, all while gearing up for exams. They have a name for this combination in the spring – “March Madness” – but I’m not sure what they call it in the winter, when we collectively descend into a long, chilly Ottawa winter and a bout of Seasonal Anxiety Disorder.

Nasty November would probably be a good one. Nauseating November. Or how about we just call it what it is – Extremely Crappy and Seemingly Endless November.

Other years, I’ve marked up my agenda and gotten down to work. This year, however, it seems like my head is perpetually somewhere else.

I thought this might have to do with a lack of time management, disorganization, or even just laziness. And I don’t dispute those are probably part of the problem. But I also thought this lack of concentration was unique to me.

But after some really solid whining, I started to hear from a lot of friends – bright, well adjusted kids with well oiled work ethics – that third year was getting to them, too.

A large number of them have dropped a class, conceding that four is just more manageable. One friend told me he’s taking next semester off. Another says he wishes he was. Others are going on co-op, opting for a lighter course load, going on exchange (including me), or just plain dragging their feet.

We developed a couple theories about why this might be. The obvious one is – third year is just harder. Like every year of university, the standards go up – the papers are longer, the readings heavier, the topics more challenging. Naturally, there are some growing pains.

But there might be something else. Call it the half done burnout, if you want. But you can trace it to people like me who, for the first time, are realizing all they’ve seen is school – and are thinking that might not be a good thing.

I went from high school straight into university, and when I moved across the country, like many first years, I was just seventeen.

I had done nothing. My work experience consisted of making lattes, my writing experience was basically a couple book reports. I had good teachers and I worked hard – I had to, to get into university – but I had never stayed in on a weekend night to do school work.

My life experience was even thinner. I had travelled with my family, but I had never been further then summer camp on my own. I had never cooked for myself, nor had a serious boyfriend. And as my first lonely semester proved, I didn’t really know how to make friends.

Going to university was what I wanted, and I don’t think I would have been happy otherwise. I think the idea of working or travelling – veering away from a path which might be stressful, but was at least well marked – scared me more than school ever did.

I have a lot of friends who didn’t go to school immediately. And I have to admit, I thought if they didn’t go right away, they might never go.

Two years later, most of those people have proved me wrong. Many of them are now in school, and unlike a lot of restless 17-year-olds, they actually want to be there. All of them have travelled around the world, they’ve worked and moved out and grown up.

I love school, and I think it’s where I belong at this point in my life. But sometimes I feel like what I’ve seen the most is the commute from my apartment to the library and back. And there’s only so much you can learn from that.

And when I apply for internship after internship, anxiously poring over my transcript or resume and agonizing over my post-grad potential for grad school or even just a journalism job, lately I`ve been one to stop and take a deep breath. I look up from my computer and out of my dining room window, where the late afternoon sunshine is drifting along the weathered bricks of the lovely old houses that line my street. And I think:

What’s the big hurry?

Eleven per cent had thoughts of suicide or hurting themselves, half didn’t seek professional help

Stress over grades. Financial worries. Trouble sleeping. Feeling hopeless.

So much for those carefree college days. The vast majority of U.S. college students are feeling stressed these days, and significant numbers are at risk of depression, according to an Associated Press-mtvU poll

Eighty-five per cent of the students reported feeling stress in their daily lives in recent months, with worries about grades, school work, money and relationships the big culprits.

At the same time, 42 per cent said they had felt down, depressed or hopeless several days during the past two weeks, and 13 per cent showed signs of being at risk for at least mild depression, based on the students’ answers to a series of questions that medical practitioners use to diagnose depressive illness.

These students complained of trouble sleeping, having little energy or feeling down or hopeless – and most hadn’t gotten professional help.

Eleven per cent had had thoughts that they’d be better off dead or about hurting themselves.

That’s not just a case of the blues to be shrugged off by taking a break with Facebook or going for a workout.

Kristin Potts, who graduated from Penn State last week with a 4.0 in chemistry and will go on for a master’s, says she’s seen warning signs among fellow classmates.

“I had a couple friends who didn’t come out of their rooms very much,” she said. “I tried my hardest not to be like that, but I definitely saw it.”

At the University of Maryland in College Park, students were sobered by two suicides within two weeks this past semester.

“It was pretty scary,” says Aimee Mayer, a junior studying psychology. She says there’s lots of information and help available for students with mental disorders, but “there’s still a stigma associated with mental health issues and so a lot of people don’t want to go to those services. They feel like they’re less cool or something like that if they go. It’s like a sign of vulnerability.”

Megan Salame, a sophomore studying civil engineering at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., says she’d turn first to her parents if she felt depressed. But she hastened to add, “Depressed – I don’t really like to use that word because it sounds so negative.”

Mental health disorders like depression typically begin relatively early in life, doctors say, and college is a natural time for symptoms to emerge.

The AP-mtvU poll surveyed students at 40 U.S. colleges, exploring the students’ state of mind and the pressures they face, including strains from the tough economy. It found substantial numbers of students with symptoms of depression, many of them failing to receive professional help. Among the poll results:

• Nine per cent of students were at risk of moderate to severe depression. That’s in line with a recent medical study that found seven per cent of young people had depression.
• Almost a quarter of those with a parent who had lost a job during the school year showed signs of at least mild depression, more than twice the percentage of those who hadn’t had a parent lose a job. More than twice as many students whose parents had lost a job said they had seriously considered ending their own life, 13 per cent to five per cent.
• Among those who reported serious symptoms of moderate depression or worse, just over a quarter had ever been diagnosed with a mental health condition.
• More than half of those who reported having seriously considered suicide at some point in the previous year had not received any treatment or counseling.
• Just a third of those with moderate symptoms of depression or worse had received any support or treatment from a counselor or mental health professional since starting college.
• Nearly half of those diagnosed with at least moderate symptoms weren’t familiar with counselling resources on campus.

Anne Marie Albano, an associate professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University, said college is a “tender age” developmentally, a period when young adults start taking responsibility for their lives. They’re selecting careers, moving toward financial independence, establishing long-term relationships, perhaps marrying, having children.

The most troubling thing coming out of the AP-mtvU poll and other studies of young adults dealing with depression, she said, is that “they don’t get help” at a time when they’re just venturing off on their own.

“They have to learn to become their own monitors about their mental health and yet they have no training to do that,” she said.

Alison Malmon, whose older brother, Brian, committed suicide when she was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania in 2000, decided to do something about it. After searching unsuccessfully for a group that she could bring to campus that would encourage students to talk about mental health issues and seek help, Malmon created Open Minds. That group has grown into the non-profit Active Minds, with chapters on more than more than 200 campuses.

Malmon, 27, executive director of the non-profit, says students don’t have to worry about how to draw the line between everyday blues and clinical depression.

“You don’t need to have a serious, diagnosable depression to go talk to someone,” she said. “If you feel down or if you feel like you’re not yourself, go talk to somebody about it.”

The AP-mtvU poll found that 84 per cent of students said they’d know where to turn for help if they were in serious emotional distress or thinking about hurting themselves. Most said they’d go first to friends or family. Twenty per cent said they’d try school counselling.

That means it may be up to friends and family to guide students toward professional help where warranted, said Malmon.

Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute for Mental Health, said students need to understand that depression is “a very treatable illness.”

Campus counselling centres are a good resource, he said, although they’re not all set up take care of serious mental illnesses.

“There should be somebody there who could at least assess this, and in some cases offer reassurance that ‘I’m sure you’ll feel better after exams are over,”‘ he said. Serious cases can be referred for treatment, he said – “and treatment works.”

Depressive disorders afflict an estimated 9.5 per cent of adult Americans in a given year, or about 20.9 million people. The median age for onset is 30.

According to the mental health institute, the first step to getting appropriate treatment is to visit a doctor. Certain medications and medical conditions, such as viruses or a thyroid disorder, can cause the same symptoms as depression. If doctors rule out a medical cause, then they should conduct a psychological evaluation or refer the patient to a mental health professional.

The poll was conducted April 22 to May 4 by Edison Media Research and involved interviews with 2,240 undergraduate students ages 18-24 at four-year colleges. To protect privacy, the schools where the poll was conducted are not being identified, the students who responded were not asked for their names and people interviewed for this story were not part of the survey. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The TV network mtvU is operated by the MTV Networks division of Viacom and available at many colleges. MtvU’s sponsorship of the poll is related to its mental-health campaign “Half of Us,” which it runs with the Jed Foundation, a nonprofit group that works to reduce suicide among young people.

- Associated Press writers Ann Sanner in Washington and Genaro Armas in State College, Pa., AP Television Producer Faryl Ury and Multimedia Editor Kevin Vineys contributed to this report.