Each semester, communication with students frequently involves discussions of stress and anxiety. While informal advising and mentoring from faculty may help decrease students' anxiety, it is helpful to know what evidence-based strategies for stress and anxiety reduction can decrease students' anxiety. Participants of this session will
-discuss the prevalence of anxiety in college students.
-explore evidence-based strategies to decrease anxiety in college students.
-plan strategies to incorporate into their class(es) to address anxiety in their students.
Methods / Approach:
A literature review was conducted to gain information regarding anxiety and stress in college students. Using the ERIC database, the following search criteria: date range of 2010 to present, full-text, peer-reviewed journal articles using the search terms "anxiety in college students." The search resulted in 151 articles. Upon review of the articles, 21 peer-reviewed publications were relevant to the search topic. The majority of articles eliminated focused on test anxiety, public speaking anxiety, and subject-specific anxiety (i.e., math, statistics, language).
Results / Conclusion: Current research demonstrates that biofeedback, meditation, mindfulness, and sleep education all assist in decreasing anxiety in college students (Burns et al., 2011; Crowley & Munk, 2017; Ratanasiripong et al., 2010; Ratanasiripong et al., 2012; Sadigh et al., 2014).