Promoting wellbeing and coping skills in higher education

Throughout this book, a range of factors have been explored that impact on educators and on students. Chapter 7 put the spotlight on the student experience of stress. What is critical, of course, is how well one copes and this is the focus of this final chapter. In trying to create a structure to see the key influences that relate to student stress, the author separated the sources of stress from their effects and from how students cope. This is an over-simplification of course. The sources and effects of stress and how students cope are all inter-related and bi-directional. The significance of a source of stress depends on one’s current wellbeing, and this is affected by how well one has and is coping. It was mentioned in Chapter 7, for example, that responses to stress can become new stressors, such as loneliness as a response to stress and this response interacts with other stressors, such as the student’s experience of academic stress leading to a greater impact on academic outcome. Moreover, students with an earlier history of childhood trauma were more likely to experience more adverse outcomes on wellbeing, health, and academic performance compared with students who did not report earlier trauma. This illustrates how sources of stress and their effects and coping are all inter-connected.