Excessive worrying. Irrational fears. Self-consciousness. Self-doubt. These are all symptoms individuals that struggle with anxiety in their everyday life have to deal with. Anxiety is something that is extremely common in the modern world, and it can be assumed that almost everyone knows someone who suffers from anxiety- whether that is a friend, parent, or sibling- or suffers from anxiety themselves. Anxiety can be described as, “an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physical signs (such as tension, sweating, and increased pulse rate), by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one's capacity to cope with it” (Merriam-Webster). Anxiety is a problem that has been written about in texts both new and old, and seems to have been prevalent through the ages. However, anxiety recently is discussed more, and the social stigma around it is lessening. More and more people every day are beginning to seek help for their anxiety. While many people are reaching out for help, colleges need to adapt a program to help students reach their full potential, both in school and in the future.

Both society and scientist’s view on anxiety has greatly evolved over the years. Before the term “anxiety disorder” was coined, scientists used to call it a phobia. The first phobia meeting was held in 1978 in White Plains, New York. By 1980, a small group founded the Phobia Society of America. From then on out, the development of treatments and more information on the disease began to rapidly be figured out. Scientists joined groups solely interested in figuring out what anxiety really is, its effects on people, and how to most effectively treat it. Researchers quickly began to realize that panic attacks lead to abnormal blood flow to the brain, along with the fact that anxiety disorders can lead to social and health consequences (ADAA).  With these findings, the race to discover everything there is about anxiety began. 

Although there have been many improvements in the field of anxiety, scientists still have a long way to go trying to figure out the best way to diagnose and treat individuals with an anxiety disorder. Anxiety is especially prevalent in college students. “Nearly one in five of us — 18 percent — has an anxiety disorder” (Luhrmann). This is an astonishingly high number of people who suffer from an anxiety disorder. It is higher than it ever has been before, clearly showing that there is a flaw somewhere in our education system or the way we decide to treat people with anxiety. Anxiety disrupts the normal homeostasis of a human body. The traditional “fight or flight” ideal is when adrenaline begins to pump due to an immediate danger. Someone with anxiety, however, has little to no control over how often the “fight or flight” reaction occurs. 

While providing more resources and tools to help with the anxiety level of college students is something that needs to be done, it does not come without its flaws. Students are increasingly having emotional problems and stress over everyday occurrences, and more than ever before. When Peter Gray was discussing with professors at a certain college, they stated that “they had grown afraid to give low grades for poor performance, because of the subsequent emotional crises they would have to deal with in their offices” (Gray). In todays age, students are being put under much more pressure to succeed than every before. Competition for jobs has become more rigorous, and more education is needed now than ever before. While it is a valid point that more students are afraid to fail, and that they have anxieties over more everyday and trivial things, it does not mean colleges can just sit back and watch it happen. It is a necessity to make the students into the best people they could possibly be, and college is a time for shaping adolescents. Without the proper help, students can fall to anxiety and depression, possibly never actually succeeding. This is the issue. While I do agree that young adults have become overly worried about every small thing in life and that they will not always have the help provided to them in the “real world”- they are still young adults. College is a time to find out who an individual is as a person, and it is a time to figure out what they will do with the rest of their lives. So yes, students may go running to help more than ever, but is that really a bad thing? If society could teach these young adults how to deal with their everyday anxieties, it will be setting them up for a bigger and better future. Colleges should implement more resources and tools to help with the anxiety levels of college students because anxiety can lessen the overall quality of life of a student preventing them from achieving their full potential in school, can lead to problems such as drug and alcohol abuse, and having resources will teach students how to deal with anxiety in their everyday life and in the future.

One of the main reasons anxiety needs to be addressed in college students is due to the fact that anxiety can lessen the overall quality of life as a student. With all the extra pressures students are faced with, it is often times hard for them to cope and deal. Usually this is when it leads to an anxiety disorder. Whether it is a disorder the student may have from birth or something they acquired over the years, it is quite possible that their anxieties are standing in the way of them achieving their full potential in college. If a student has anxieties over trivial college things like classes, tests, and presentations, it can make it very hard for them to succeed. Anxiety can cloud the brain, leading an individual to feel a multitude of symptoms anywhere from a fast heart rate to feeling like they are going to vomit to feeling like they are having a heart attack. If these were the things running through an individual’s brain every time they have to take a test, for example, it would make it extremely hard for them to focus on the test instead of focusing on all the symptoms they feel of their anxiety or possible anxiety attack. Sometimes, the emotions of students are not taken seriously enough. Students with anxiety disorders can be seen as being dramatic or brushed off as the individual just worrying too much. 

Disney’s “Inside Out” tells a story of a young girl who is run by five emotions: fear, joy, sadness, disgust, and anger. While this movie is mostly directed towards children, “It is also distinctly American. It is based on a particular model of the mind that we take for granted, but that is in fact as culturally idiosyncratic as the way we dress” (Luhrmann). This is a quality we as Americans perhaps possess, the oversimplification of the way us as humans think and feel. The young girl is run by these five basic emotions, without any other factors coming into place, which is simply not true. College students constantly have to deal with their many emotions, and to add anxieties on top of that is often giving college students too much to handle on their own. This tends to cause a multitude of problems in a student’s college career, not allowing them to reach their full potential. 

Not only will ignoring the issue of anxiety lessen the overall quality of life a student has, but it could also lead to problems such as drug and alcohol abuse. Students who are attempting to cope with their anxieties often time turn to alcohol as a coping method. In one study done for the American Psychological Association, Valerie V Grant, a professor at Dalhousie University, performed an experiment on college students to figure out which drinking motive students have lead to the highest risk factors for alcohol abuse. In her findings, she found that “Individuals with different drinking motives show distinctive patterns of alcohol use and problems. Drinking to cope, or endorsing strong coping motives for alcohol use, has been shown to be particularly hazardous” (Grant 226). When students drink to cope, they run the risk of long-term alcohol addiction. To an individual with high levels of anxiety, anxiety attacks and overall feelings of anxiousness can be a very common thing. If individuals were to drink every time they felt this way, they would perhaps be drinking most nights of the week. Grant also found that those who are coping with anxiety tend to drink more on afternoons where they have been feeling anxious during the day, leading to alcohol related problems like binge drinking (Grant 228). Not only could this lead to lifetime problems, but as stated before, also can reduce the amount of success an individual will have in school, if they are constantly drinking to cope with their anxiety.

Another experiment was done on college students discussing social anxiety, and how this makes college students vulnerable for problematic drinking. In this experiment, eighty-three college students with both high and low levels of social anxieties were studied based on how many standard drinks of alcohol they had consumed over the last thirty days. They were then put into a room with an experimenter, and were told they were in a school lunchroom and had no where to sit, and to attempt to make conversation with the experimenter in the room, who was distant and hard to engage. When it was all done, the subjects were instructed to discuss how much they wanted to drink to cope with the social anxiety that they were presented with (Potter 385-386). This test was to examine the different ways students reacted to social situations, and how anxiety affected the need for alcohol as a coping method. As a result of this experiment, it was found that “in comparison to participants with low social anxiety, those with high social anxiety reflected experiencing greater anxiety during the laboratory social interaction, enjoyed the interaction less, believed they had performed more poorly during the interaction, were more self-critical about their behavior during the interaction, and made more negative and fewer positive trait attributions about themselves” (Potter 387). It was harder for the individuals with high levels of anxiety to cope with the social situation they were presented with. The individuals with high levels of anxiety responded with wanting to drink right after the interaction was over, and in the following week; while the ones with low levels of anxiety did not as frequently. This task caused the individuals with high anxiety to focus on their negative thoughts and emotions with social situations, increasing their urge to drink to alleviate this stress.

An individual’s family is a major part of his/her life. In the recent years, divorce rates and broken families have been on the rise. This can lead to anxieties for students who are attempting to deal with problems at home and working on their college career. Divorce has gone up in the recent years, and “Although conduct and emotional problems increased in all family types, the rates amongst adolescents in non-intact families (separated, divorced and step) tend to be higher than intact families (for example, approximately 20 per cent versus 12 per cent in 1999). There is some evidence that about 15-30 per cent of the change in emotional and behavioural problems could possibly be linked to the change in family structure” (Hagell). Due to the higher levels of anxiety in students with a broken family structure, more students have been entering college with higher levels of anxiety than ever before. This can lead to a multitude of problems, and without the proper help could develop into depression and an unhealthy lifestyle, leading the students with these broken families to do more poorly in school. This, however, could be alleviated with the help of doctors and counselors to help the students deal with the stress they are experiencing from home, so they could perhaps become more productive in school.

Not only will having resources on campus help to alleviate students stressors from home, but it will also help them alleviate the stresses they experience from school. Many schools are attempting to fine an efficient way to help to treat students with mental health problems, especially anxiety. Anxiety has recently passed depression as the number one mental health issue in college students, and “Nearly one in six college students has been diagnosed with or treated for anxiety within the last 12 months, according to the annual national survey by the American College Health Association” (Hoffman). With a number this high, colleges have to be able to adapt and cater to the needs of students, in order for them to succeed. Many students have begun to seek help when perhaps they would not have before, since the stigma around mental health has begun to become less and less as the years go on.

A student named Graves was once a victim to his own mental health. Graves suffered from extreme social anxiety, causing him to become extremely anxious over small things like walking past people and riding the bus. Due to his extreme anxiety, he began to cut himself as a coping mechanism. He even became so ill that he was hospitalized twice for psychiatric observation. Luckily, Graves was able to seek help at his college’s psychiatric department. Now, months later with the help of therapy, medicine, and group sessions, Grant is happy again and back on track with his college career. He even has made more friends and has improved greatly in school (Hoffman). This is just one example of how college resources available for students can drastically change their lives- for the better. Without this resource, Graves might have suffered more, and possibly would have never achieved in life. The ability of a college to help students like Graves is a great responsibility, and while it is hard; it needs to be done. 

Not only will these resources help students like Grant in their school career, but it will also help to teach students life skills to help them way beyond their college years. If students know how to deal with their anxieties, they can cope with them better. Medicine can help to regulate these anxieties, but a lot of coping is up to the individual also. There are many techniques to help lessen anxieties, and calm an individual down if they are experiencing a panic attack or just simply feel anxious. When students enter the “real world” or the working force, they may have fewer resources available to them to deal with this stress. If the problem is not addressed as soon as possible, it could perhaps develop into something much worse. Adults with anxieties have more of a social stigma to “suck it up” and to stop being anxious all the time, and perhaps it is less accepted than when an individual is at a college age. Due to this reason, it is very important for an individual to seek help at a college age or younger, and it is important for a college to have those resources readily available to students.

If colleges do not provide adequate help for students with anxiety, a major problem will continue to ensue. With anxiety being the number one health problem and the statistics for individuals being so high, it is not something colleges could ignore. Without resources being set into place, students will not be able to reach their full potential in college, or even their full quality of life, due to the debilitating nature of their anxiety. This could also lead to problems such as drug or alcohol abuse. With the implements of more programs and more help for students, they can learn how to cope and handle their anxieties, as well as real life skills that will be important for them in the future. Anxiety will continue to be a problem that humans suffer with in the future, but colleges can make a stance against it, alleviating the struggles of many individuals, helping to stop the problem and improve the life of their students.
