Study stress, student stress, and life stress. Whatever the type, according to Professor Lies Korevaar stress is not a problem, and certainly not a disorder or an illness.
‘Stress is normal. It’s a response to threats and tension. The body prepares itself to move into action. That’s usually very useful. And in education, of course, students encounter all sorts of challenging things. If you’re about to take an exam, you feel pressure, tension, stress. That’s quite normal.’
But aren’t some people more sensitive to stress than others?
‘Certainly, there are big differences. But that doesn’t mean you need to pathologise the thing itself, stress isn’t a disorder or an illness. You can increasingly read that stress is problematic, something negative that shouldn’t exist. This viewpoint can involve incorrect interpretations of research. If you ask someone whether he’s troubled by stress, then you can be sure that a high percentage will answer yes. Because everyone experiences stress. But if you then interpret this negatively, then you get an exaggerated picture.’
After asking someone whether he’s troubled by stress, you then have to ask him whether the stress hinders his day-to-day functioning
So when does stress become a problem?
‘I’ll come back to what I just said about research. After asking someone whether he’s troubled by stress, you then have to ask him whether the stress hinders his day-to-day functioning. Only when the answer to this second question is positive does the stress become problematic. Then you need to find out how stress hinders day-to-day functioning. And you need to work very precisely here. Keep asking more in-depth questions.’
Such as?
‘If for instance someone says that he can’t sleep because of stress, that still doesn’t signify much. How often does that happen? Every day or once every two weeks? Does he lie tossing and turning in bed for hours or does he wake up early and then can’t get back to sleep? And what does he actually regard as a good night’s sleep for himself? In this way you grasp the problem in more concrete terms, and then you can also find concrete solutions.
Do students experience stress because they can’t plan, or do students experience planning problems because they are stressed?
‘What goes for sleep problems also goes for concentration problems, feelings of anxiety and so on. You need to investigate when these occur and how they influence day-to-day functioning.’
How did you discover a link between student stress and poor planning?
‘The stressed students say this themselves. The majority of the students who took part in our course Dealing with Stress point to the planning and organisation of their studies as an important cause of stress. So we investigated this further. We distributed a survey and around 2800 students took part in this. An initial look at the collected data showed that many students have planning problems. But that’s just a provisional finding. You need to be careful when interpreting data like this. Among other things, you always need to see whether a chicken-and-egg effect is involved: do students experience stress because they can’t plan, or do students experience planning problems because they are stressed?’
But you suspect the first option: that poor planning causes the stress?
‘That was what the participants in our course indicated. Now we need to take a close look at the figures to see exactly what’s going on. But the idea seems to make sense, because poor planning leads to lack to time and of course stress rears its head when you feel that time is short.’
And then as a student you think: if only I’d done this or that.
‘If you have studied the material, then whatever the case you have less reason to be stressed during an examination than if you haven’t studied, or have done very little. In the latter case the student can learn how to deal with the stress, but the better option is for him to ensure that he comes well-prepared to the exam room. That’s a practical problem.’
Other students make excellent plans but then they don’t manage to stick to the plan
That immediately makes things sound a lot less dramatic. Is this sort of planning easy to learn?
‘That too varies enormously, but it seems to be. The HBO (higher professional education) and MBO (intermediate vocational education) students to whom we provide support say that our approach benefits them, that they are better prepared for test situations and that their study performance has improved. To give one example, recently there was a student from the group who took the Dealing with Stress course, and after eight years he has gained his last study credit. But we still haven’t charted the long-term effects of the approach. Although that’s something we will be researching.’
Some people actually get really stressed when they hear the word planning.
‘Not everyone has the same problems with planning. That’s why the approach is always an individual one, tailor-made. Some students don’t know how to approach the planning process, and they first need to get the hang of this. Other students make excellent plans but then they don’t manage to stick to the plan. That’s a different problem. An intervention is most effective when you focus on the individual needs. This applies throughout the care and assistance sector: you always need to make sure that you don’t provide standard facilities for specific problems.’
Um…
‘Sometimes it’s really obvious. To assist students in a wheelchair you modify buildings, to assist blind students you provide braille texts. But where is the wheelchair entrance for stressed students…? It’s really difficult to gain a good picture here. Stress also has very different causes. A foreign student who is lonely, the first-year student who has a binding study advice coming up, the smartphone addict who is suffering from the addiction, and so on…’
The fear of missing out.
‘Right, FOMO. These can all be sources of stress and you need to apply custom solutions here. You can’t set up a standard approach for this issue.’
People who come to Hanze UAS are there to get a bachelor or master degree. They are students, not patients
What advice would you give to students who are suffering from stress?
‘Talk to your academic counsellor about this, or to a lecturer you trust. But focus on the things that you can reasonably expect from them. A lecturer will tell you about the things that are holding you back in your studies and will say whether and what they can do to help remove these obstacles. But he can’t do any more than this, a lecturer isn’t a therapist.’
If we’re talking about that level, can you expect any help from the student psychologists soon to be appointed by Hanze?
‘Certainly, students who are experiencing stress or other mental issues can be helped in this way. If more serious psychiatric issues are involved, such as a psychosis or a bipolar disorder, then it’s sensible to refer the student on to other facilities in the mental healthcare system. Here they can offer those students what they need: therapy and treatment. But the young people who come to Hanze UAS are there to get a bachelor or master degree. They are students, not patients.’
