Academic Stress and Its Impact on College Students’ Mental Health

Abstract

Academic stress has become the main element which defines modern College life as students face academic pressure throughout their studies. The study investigates how academic stress factors affect mental health results which include depression and anxiety and burnout and sleep disorders among 320 College students in Etawah. The study used a cross-sectional survey design to collect data which included validated instruments that measured stress with the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) and depression using PHQ-9 and anxiety through GAD-7 and student burnout assessment with the Maslach Burnout Inventory — Student Survey (MBI-SS). The study found that 78.4% of participants consider examination pressure to be their most stressful academic experience while students who experience high academic stress demonstrate depression rates of 54% and anxiety rates of 62% and burnout rates of 58% which exceed the levels seen in students with low academic stress. The study found that stressor patterns change based on students' academic year and their gender and field of study. The paper presents theoretical mechanisms which explain how academic stress leads to mental health decline while it assesses current institutional support systems and introduces a three-tier mental health support system for Indian universities.

Keywords: Academic Stress, College students, Mental Health, Anxiety, Burnout, PSS-10, PHQ-9, Higher Education.