Students facing the stresses of finals and the holiday season may fall into chronic stress due to high expectations, an expert said Friday.
Dr. Karla Birkholz, a Glendale-based family physician, said stress and depression are real problems during the holidays.
“People expect a lot from the holidays, and it’s a really stressful time because there are a lot of things going on,” she said.
Depression becomes an issue when it begins to affect how a person functions, Birkholz said, and for students, depression can originate from stressful situations if they aren’t handled correctly.
Many people who are away from family, have lost a loved one or who are juggling many responsibilities at once are likely to experience stress during this time of year, Birkholz said.
“The dosing of stress is important,” she said. “It’s fine, as long as we can deal with the things in our lives [in a healthy way].”
Birkholz used an analogy to describe how people reach a tipping point where stress can turn into depression.
“You have the ability to handle a cup full of stress,” she said. “Stress can pile up and sometimes just one little thing can make it overflow.”
Nonprofit leadership and management senior Olga Lykhvar said she has learned to manage her stress by not leaving any schoolwork to pile up around finals.
“If stuff does get piled up, I try to take one thing at a time and don’t try to do every thing at once,” she said.
During the holidays, it’s easy for students to get stressed out because they don’t have a lot of money to buy gifts, they have to figure out how to get home and have finals to worry about, she said.
Lykhvar, a peer mentor for the nonprofit program, said it’s important for those involved in organizations to have good time-management skills to prevent stress.
“There are definitely a lot of things going on in our lives besides being a student,” she said. “The most important thing is to prioritize what is important and what is not.”
The ASU Counseling Services offer help to students who have difficulty managing stress, Lykhvar said, adding that she recommends any students who are struggling to seek help.
Dr. Jennifer Hartmark-Hill, director of ASU’s Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine Resident Education Program, said the counseling services and physicians on campus are well trained to deal with students experiencing overwhelming stress.
“Anytime somebody experiences long-term or chronic stress, the body cannot compensate,” she said. “Any student that notices that [kind of] stress should see their physician.”
People experiencing anxiety, stress and depression may be taking on a workload of more than they can handle, or placing emphasis on the wrong areas in their lives, Hartmark-Hill said, and it can also have unhealthy side effects.
The most common side effects of chronic stress are not getting adequate sleep, not exercising and a failure to eat healthfully, she said.
“Chronic stress can weaken the immune system,” she said. “I think that over time that can lead to burnout.”
During finals and the holidays, Hartmark-Hill said students should step back and assess everything they need to do and tackle only those things they can control.
“I would encourage people not to feel that they are the only ones alone in their problem and reach out for help,” she said.
Reach the reporter at ndgilber@asu.edu
