A just-released study of more than 24,000 students at 14 colleges and universities in Minnesota confirms what CSHAL has been tracking:  stress levels among college students are reaching epidemic proportions.

About 7 out of 10 students reported experiencing stress, with close to half that number believing that the anxiety was having a negative impact on their grades.  Those students not experiencing stress had a 3.37 average grade; those who said they had experienced anxiety and felt that it affected their grades, had only a 3.12 average.

The wide-ranging health study also found that those students who did not get enough sleep, did not exercise much, engaged in drinking or smoking, or used drugs all suffered from lower grades than their counterparts.

A student group called "Mindfulness for Students" plans activities to help students relax, and appears to have had some positive impact on helping students cope with stress.  We will be exploring the effectiveness of peer groups like this one to develop recommendations on how students can better cope with stress.

And we will be analyzing the survey in more detail in coming blog posts, so stay tuned.

Public colleges and universities are already starting to face some real financial challenges given the deteriorating economy and tightening state budgets. And families are getting hit hard in their 401(k)s and 529 plans, often used to help fund college.

At the University of Maryland, the budget cuts have translated into a hiring freeze, causing a position for a staff psychologist to be vacant come January.  Kelly Kesler, the assistant director of health promotion at Maryland, is quoted in the school newspaper “The Diamondback” as saying that, “Normally we would run a search for a permanent replacement, but we can’t unless [the hiring freeze] is lifted in time.”

Fortunately, there are possible solutions.  One approach to dealing with the budget cuts and rising fees while preserving a high quality of care is to accept a family's current health insurance policy.  

The University of South Florida health center has recently started accepting multiple insurance providers “in network,” and “this means that going to the clinic will be cheaper for students,” according to the “Oracle,” the college paper.  To reduce administrative costs associated with processing claims, USF teamed up with its medical center, USF Health.  We’ve written about how Ohio University dealt with a $400,000 shortfall by also accepting a family’s insurance policy at the health center.

We think that more schools need to embrace creative solutions to keeping costs in check while providing the best health and wellness services to our students.