Hello -- this is a topic that interests me, because when I was sharing various student appeals committees in our faculty, I noticed an escalating prevalence of mental health causes for the appeals. And I have been told that almost half of all undergraduates now enter university on some type of psych med, which I find very disturbing. But I don't know if I can help you, because you haven't mention one of the most important variables (to my mind) in your list! I study nutrition and mental health. The world literature shows that a) dietary patterns predict development of mental disorders, b) people with diagnosed mental disorders have significantly better mental health function on days when their food records show higher levels of vitamin and mineral intake, c) broad sprectrum micronutrient treatment can improve depression and anxiety, etc. And of course we all know that when kids go to univ, their diets really turn to empty calories. Since we are in the same country, I'd be happy to discuss further by phone if you like.

I am interested as one working within a psychological therapay service for students at a University; I would welcome any research outcomes or give snippets of my experience.

This is a topic of my interest and I have published many articles on this. Based on meta-analysis and review done, two promising models that may work as educational strategies to help to improve student psychological wellbeing, which are the mindfulness practice and the DEAL model. The mindfulness is a well researched approach, while the DEAL model is relatively a new educational strategy to empower students to handle various problems. If you are interested, you can download several related articles through my profile. If you need further information please message me.

Wow, thank you, I would love to see the DEAL programme and anything else, not mindfulness at this stage as I am aware of this, but other approaches and research if I can be directed-thank you.

Very interesting topic. We have studied stress in younger populations (in the school) Anger, depression and anxiety associated with endothelial function in childhood and adolescence (Osika W, Montgomery SM, Dangardt F, Währborg P, Gan LM, Tideman E, Friberg P. Arch Dis Child. 2011 Jan;96(1):38-43. doi: 10.1136/adc.2008.152777. Epub 2009 Oct 11, Self-perceived psychosomatic health in Swedish children, adolescents and young adults: an internet-based survey over time. Friberg P, Hagquist C, Osika W.

BMJ Open. 2012 Jul 31;2(4). doi:pii: e000681. 10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000681) but we are now also preparing studies re stress in students at university level. ACT seems to be a promising intervention.

The role of psychological flexibility in a self-help acceptance and commitment therapy intervention for psychological distress in a randomized controlled trial.

Fledderus M, Bohlmeijer ET, Fox JP, Schreurs KM, Spinhoven P.

Behav Res Ther. 2013 Mar;51(3):142-51. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2012.11.007.

Dear Hany and Colleagues worldwide!

I'm interested in this topic too.

Unfortunately, stress level among medical and other health sciences students is quite common across frontiers and continents. It can be assessed by different questionnaires however its management as an holistic approach it is much less reported.

I would suggest a personalized approach taking into account:

- To identify types and sources of stress

- To choose strategies to de-stress themselves:

1. Rest

2. Exercise

3. Tools cellular protection

To me Stress ,Depression & other areas have become the order of the day & it applies to every professional & vocational of every categories .I appreciated your valuable suggestion to place subject in educational mode & also under health problem .For students in their schooling period ,the environment to be created in the home as a part of sweet home & parent can play a very fruitful part .

After certain years even teachers can motivate student in their light of their development .As for Health problem apart from the medicine ,faith -healing will also play considerable a good part.

In a very humble mode during my earlier period as an Sr Executive of co's of repute & also as an Admn consultant i have placed the said subject in the management compass & also in the recruitment process of my consultancy areas.

In order to have my own evalution ,i have also arrange & individual base programme to keep the participanting Calm & Quiet in the midst of Worries-Tension & Frustration .

In the light of your suggestion i intend to place my 2 to 3 article in above area in blog ''www.rohitparikh.blogspot.in

Dear Miriam Cassel,

Here is a 4-hour intervention designed based on the DEAL model https://www.mededportal.org/publication/9241

Tq.

Sure.

Thank you all so much for your answers and inputs! I value your diverse ideas very and I will be taking a closer look at each of your perspectives. It is definitely encouraging to see that there is interest in this field world wide and hopefully I'll be able to see more of it in Canada.

actually i did some work on trainee teachers i.e at 10+2 level students who entered into teacher training course facing academic stress and health out comes i did for M.Ed dissertation . ..the finding are more related current educational , demographical factors .

The DEAL model looks good Muhamad, is there any other literature supporting this and are you/anyone able to let me have the session content? I work directly with students, this programme seems ideal for them.

Hi Miriam Cassell,

You can download all the session contents through this dropbox link

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h5q7ti1zcnzupik/aP6_M22RXP

Hopefully the contents are helpful

If you need assistant please let me know.

Best regards,

Saiful

Wow, this is great as it will add substance if it has already been used elsewhere to our efforts to engage students, many thanks for this.

We have conducted a randomised controlled trial to measure its impacts on psychological wellbeing, coping, perceived stressors and acceptability of the learning package. The study just recently completed and several manuscripts are under reviewed. Once they are published I will share with everyone.

Tq for the interest.

Hi, we are doing a survey about it. The level is mexican medicine students at their last hospital years. We have found many psychological problems, physical and bulling.

Do you want to share experiencies?

Dra Casas

Hi! for more information regarding the research related to stress, you can read the book that wrote by Kyriacou, C. (1987).

Yours is an excellent topic choice that could probably include in its scope, elementary students, as well secondary and post secondary students . I am convinced many recent (past 10-15 years) and well intentioned educational initiatives have thwarted, rather than enhanced the ability to serve kids. I believe a reason for this to be a result of increasingly narrowed mindsets, age-inappropriate approaches, and shifted priorities present in our classrooms. Caught within this landslide are educators, who are seeking to improve the highly qualitative end product of the delicate and often tenuous cognitive processes of children, in consistently measurable ways, to consistently changing standards. The undeniable amounts of stress, pressure to change, precarious programs and leadership, could well be expected, and in my mind does, contributed greatly to the production of symptoms consistent with ADHD, the need for special education services, bullying, increased familial tension, and depression in children and adults. Have you looked into a possible correlation between education initiatives and the onset of the aforementioned symptomology? Novel methods of education, or maybe more realistic/relevant methods of education could encompass the latter half of you thesis. This is a great topic to tackle, perhaps with a doctoral education student?

Fantastic topic. And, in brief, yes- I am interested in this area. I have conducted work related to medical students. We used a mindfulness based intervention to help build resilience and positive coping strategies. Linked to this, we have conducted cross-sectional analyses of indicators of psychological morbidity (using standardised tools, such as PHQ, PSS, BriefCOPE etc).

Re: Specific learning difficulties ([SpLD] e.g. dyslexia and ADHD)- a complex relationship with stress and depression- do they co-occur, pre-dispose, exacerbate or trigger? I believe the current thinking is there is a strong case for co-occurrence, and thinking through it logically- it is likely that SpLD may very well make it more likely that learners with dyslexia or ADHD etc are more likely to suffer from stress (struggling academically, for instance, leading to increased perceived pressure). The SpLD may also affect ability to cope with these stressors.... complicated.

There are a whole host of papers out there looking at mindfulness in students (medical students and wider university), and a huge body of work validating various useful tools. DM me if you'd like to hear / know more specifics.

BWs

Duncan

It is equally important to have life style which would incur stress/tension problems along with intervention techniques.

I am now working about burnout in students and teachers and the relationship burnout-academic performance. I apply math techniques like linear regression and data mining.

How refreshing to see someone with a view of the big picture in education which has a much greater impact on an individual life than providing a degree or diploma. School is supposed to prepare us for the world of work yet for many, the scars left by our educational system impede future success. This has been an interest of mine for years and would be happy to share what I know about ADHD and depression among students.

I am interested. I hoped to do my dissertation on health problems and burnout in teachers and could not find anything. Hope your work with students goes better. I would be interested in finding out how the health of teachers is related to the health of their students. I would guess that many teachers are also suffering from the same maladies as students. The increasingly heavy work load is making teachers depressed and anxious as well as their students.

Just to add some conversation, I find that in many discussion groups people are quick to promote familiar assessments that they have perhaps benefited from. In my opinion, when it comes to subjective issues I find that many assessments have been created from common perspectives rather than individual realities. For example: there are many maladies associated with forgetfulness or memory failure, but very little notice is associated with not listening. There is a great divide in cognitive reasoning between failure to remember vs failure to listen yet there is no assessment capable of making that distinction. There is a definite link associated with an increase in ADD or ADHD and the fact that any assessment used for diagnosis will combine the two (ability to listen, ability to remember) - yet only one has any correlation to the issue at all.

Hi, Hany. I’ve been interested in this field, delivered lectures on this topic etc. Congrats on your initiative! Interesting topic! Chiefly if we think of students’ first steps at school, because that’s when students might learn to enjoy things or doing things at school. That’s also when students sometimes learn to become sick or ill, psychologically speaking. I say so because even when a teacher does their best or acts with the best intentions to help a certain student, their way of approaching this student might bring psychological problems such as more shyness, learning difficulties, lack of creativity, phobia about related people or topics etc which will tend to result in failure. Your question reminded me of my previous lecture on "The Establishing Operations in the Classroom", when I said that not only the teacher’s attitude and/or behavior to a certain student’s participation in the classroom, but also the ability of the teacher to control negative attitude and/or behavior of other students to that student in question may affect this student’s psychological health. As you know, sometimes a simple facial expression or a lack of positive reaction of the teacher may be interpreted as “disapproval”, “criticism” or “punishment” for participating rather than for saying something wrong. This is fatal!

Have you read “Skinner for the Classroom – Selected Papers” (1982), Edited by Robert Epstein, and “THE TECHNOLOGY OF TEACHING” (1968), B. F. Skinner? Despite of being old books, they are still very useful. As for the second book mentioned, have a look at the chapters “Why Teachers Fail” and “The Behavior of the System”.

I think this is a very important question! And, although some mindfulness based training has been targeted at students (K-12) to address the issues you mention, I think that is a backwards approach. It would be better to have good data on the results of novel methods of education, as you write. Have you looked at Waldorf schools? The evaluations are based on teacher observations, not on quantitative scores, and students pass through the grades as a cohort. They learn to value each other's strengths across domains, not just in the academic areas (so also in arts, social strengths, kinesthetic strengths). This would be an interesting group to look at in regard to stress and depression -- perhaps even graduation rates.

Great topic. I do not know actual statistics, but in my working in the schools over the past 28 years, there are a lot more students with anxiety to the point where their functioning is impaired. Definitely worth research.

Yes,It is a good research question.I have 26 years experience as secondary school teacher .According to my experience there were lot of evidence in Sri Lankan context.

Here,Grade 5 scholarship examination which is very very competitive national level examination called "Mothers Examination" is going to be banned. Parents and teachers forced children to do heavy work lord .However, it should be scientifically studied.Although, National Institute of Education (NIE)has prepared very good primary education curriculum, the operational curriculum is more exam oriented due to grade 5 scholarship examination.

My dissertation is about teacher stress and burnout. It is uploaded here so you can see all the health problems that teachers face as a result of stress and burnout. It is a serious problem that needs more attention, as teacher training courses do not take into consideration the need for stress relieving and seld confidence boosting sessions. However, all teachers agree that they suffer from stress, and they would benefit from such courses.

Very interesting topic! congratulations! I did some studies on stress among lecturers and medical students. In fact i tried to see the association of stress and religiosity among medical students. I also found there was some effect of medical education on health-related quality of life among medical students. Good luck for your research.

It shouldn't surprise you to learn that there is a huge literature available in medical education on student and resident health and illness, including substance use, going back at least 30 years. Much of what you are looking for is currently being referred to as student, resident, and physician wellness or well-being as well as burnout.. Names other than mine that you should could lookup include Dr's Tait Shanahan and Lotte Drybye at the Mayo Clinic and Medical School. Academic Medicine is a journal which publishes a fair amount of it.

Key is to Support Alternatives

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Marks-of-a-Stress-Free-Learning-Zone-476487

I did a study of the Quality of working life of Teachers working at the higher education Institutions in that one component related to Occupational Stress and burnout syndrome experienced by them in their Job. Really it is interesting topic to explore.

Hi

This is a really interesting topic I agree. It is perhaps also an opportunity to look at attitudes which teacher / lecturers hold regarding mental health issues- are we just more aware of MH/ MI ?

You might be interested in an network in the UK called MHHE - it deals with MH issues within HE and offers lots of different fora you might find helpful!

I am also about to embark on a study which looks at this issue within Law based programmes - happy to keep in contact about this.

@ caroline gibby. My present study is about to capture the quality of work life of faculty working at various universities worldwide. Similar study was done by me on information technology professionals including call center workers. If you are interested to collaborate with my present work, u r welcome.

@Arun Vijay- thanks for this! When we get this up and running I will be in contact !

Many students will be under stress during entry ,exit level and examination time. Many methods and strategies are available to study such problems among the medical students. In my opinion it is not knowing the problems alone , how much it will affect their learning skills , development etc and how much it influence those factors in their daily life as well as in future practice of medicine.../practicing..

Thanks K N Prasad. I agree but I suspect that the issues within medical education can be linked to subject as well as practice. In law - my field- there is a significant mental health issue with students , at least equal to medicine. We are interested in identifying how as well as why this is the case and how to address it.

Hany, an area that seems to escape attention is that of how education systems report on achievement in education. Reporting of the type that is usual allocates standards to students, typically of the form 'A, B, C, D, E' or similar. This achievement reporting applied early in schooling has the effect of confirming 'failure' in any student who begins school with even the simplest deficit, such as never being read to. This exacerbates the deficit psychologically, reducing self efficacy and resilience in those students most in need. The effect is reinforced by teacher behavious and body language that are mediated by beliefs such as 'this student is failing'. The result is that students who fail early are more likely to have behavioural issues at school later that reinforce their failure. I am unfortunately unaware of any study of alternate systems. I was teaching in just such an alternate system in Australia around 2000 but unfortunately it was squashed by the government before any evidence could be obtained. My personal study got stuck in a short term qualitative action research project. It seems to me to be an area ripe for research.

A PhD student of mine did her research on principal stress and the mental and physical impact on their health. I can put you in touch with her if you are interested in exploring further.

As a nurse educator and doctoral candidate, I am working on a study regarding perceived sress in nursing students (BSN) and ways they mitigate the stress. It is also recognized in the literature nursing students have a significant amount of stress in nursing programs. I welcome any input as I am in the proposal phase, recently having my prospectus approved.

I would like to thank all of you who have been participating in this discussion! It is quite encouraging to see so many researchers from all around the world interested in this topic. Beginning this september, I will actually be starting my thesis research project conducting a literature review on the connection between certain components of our current education system (such as standardized testing) and negative health effects observed in students (such as depression or stress). Come the winter, I might conduct a small pilot study to compare the results found in the literature review with comments and feedback from students on their impressions and opinions. I will be definitely going through each post in this discussion and contacting people who have offered to further discuss this issue and see if there is any material that I can use for my research. I welcome everyone to contact me with discussions and ideas that they think I could investigate for my research! I will be continuously posting updates on my profile regarding the research and any interesting findings as well. I am also glad to share with you that me and my good friend and academic enthusiast from the University of Toronto, Zach Brown, have started a blog talking about all kinds of topics related to education. I encourage you to check it out, comment and share! The link is attached. 

Thank you! 

espressoforyourthoughts.wordpress.com

Hello all the investigators in bulling against medicine students.

We are working a thesis at national level on this serious problem in Mexico, the survey will be applied in September and we will have results in  this year, We can share them to you.

Perhaps when you have  your survey results we can do a international comparative study. Of course the study can include health professionals, specially nurses.

Please send to me your e-mail in order to further contact. 

thank you

Maria de la LUz

Hello all! If you're still interested in this topic, I am currently inviting all post-secondary students to take part in my short, anonymous survey on student health and its relationship with certain components and outcomes of the schooling system! If you're currently studying as a student then I would encourage you to fill out this survey! If you're teaching a class then I would appreciate it if you shared it with your students if you find it interesting! 

http://tiny.cc/student_health