CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

This chapter presents a survey of studies and literature that addresses the

principal concerns of the researchers, who considered relevant issues of stress

and its effects and factors that affect the health, emotions and academic

performance of a student.

Related Literature

Benefits of stress

Did you know that some stress is good for you? An article from a post on

health.com was about the beneficial effects short-term stress may provide us.

According to Richard Shelton, M.D. (2012), the vice chair for research in the

Department of psychiatry at a known university in the U.S, lists five benefits of

the everyday kind of stresses. It helps boost brainpower, it can increase

immunity in the short term, it can make you more resilient, it motivates you to

succeed, it can enhance child development in pregnant women who are

experiencing mild to moderate stress levels.

 According to Oboegbulem (2010), not all stress is bad; in fact a degree of

stress is often necessary to motivate us to achieve our goals. This is sometimes

referred to as ‘eustress’, literally good or positive stress. However, when a

situation feels overwhelming or beyond your control, the resulting ‘distress’ (bad

stress) can be damaging to your mental and physical health.

Negative Effects of Stress

According to Sinha, V.K. in his book Academic Stress and its management

(2011), stress can manifest itself in a whole range of ways, both mental and

physical. Physical symptoms can include racing heart, panic attacks, insomnia,

changes in appetite, nausea, headaches, and lowered resistance to infections

such as colds. Mental symptoms might be a lack of concentration, absent-

mindedness, anxiety and depression.

According to Centre (2010), another negative result which stress produce

is that, it can make them realize us that situation is out of our abilities or simply

it makes our perception that situation is beyond our abilities and we can’t handle

it.

According to Robinson (2010), our body naturally gives response upon

different types of situation and if the situation is not favorable, it’s dangerous or

you feel threatening it alarms us and it is called anxiety. And it may cause an
unpleasant feeling about the situation and it can also have an impact on our

performance. It may can decrease our performance in the same situations in

which we have performed better without stress.

According to Bisht, A.R. (2010), “Several identified stressors such as

financial problems, academic pressures and their consequent effect on social life

have an adverse effect on the mental health of students in this environment

especially for students of medicine and dentistry. While stressors outside the

reach of the school authorities are difficult to control, academic support including

providing a conducive learning environment, advice on means for sustenance,

added support during periods of transition are key areas for interventions.”

Definition of Stress

According to French (2010), stress is any situation or event that evokes

negative thoughts and feelings in a person. The same stressful situation is not

stressful for all people, and all people do not experience the same negative

thoughts and feelings when stressed.

According to Alatorre A.S. and Los Reyes, R. (2013), conceptualized stress

as an unpleasant emotional reaction a person has when he or she perceives an

event to be threatening. They stated that this emotional reaction may include

heightened physiological arousal due to increased reactivity of the sympathetic

nervous system. The stressor is the event itself, which is also called a stressful

life event.

According to Jack Forem’s recently updated book (2012) Transcendental

Meditation: The Essential Teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, author Jack

Forem defined stress as an imposition on the body and nervous system caused

by experience our body and mind can’t comfortably handle, whether relatively

mild (a loud noise, bright light, a surprise) or extremely intense (war, tsunamis,

physical or sexual abuse), which leaves a deep impression on us but which can

be neutralized or removed by gaining sufficient rest to heal it. By providing the

depth of rest necessary to dissolve this stress, clears the system day by day for

healthier functioning and greater enjoyment.”

According to Prabu (2015), the definition of academic stress is the anxiety

and stress that comes from schooling and education. There is often a lot of

pressure that comes along with pursuing a degree and one's education. There is

the stress of doing all of the work, balancing the time and finding time for extra-

curricular activities.

According to Nikitha et. Al. (2014), stress is the major source of anxiety

among adolescents and it may lead to low self-esteem. Many psychological

problems such as depression and suicide occur as a result of low self-esteem.

According to Centre (2010), stress is a reality which we have to face in

our everyday life. There are situations when we start to feel ourselves out of
help and start to disturb emotionally and other stressors. Many people consider

stress as an incident happen to them such as injury or job loss. Others think

stress is some kind of changes which happen to our physical body, behavior and

mind or over thoughts about situation.

There is another focus group of Centre (2010), which says stress itself is

not a problem but problem is how we handle stress. If we are not handling it

well then it well cause problems otherwise it won’t cause any problem. And if we

will not handle it properly it will seriously affect our behavior and thoughts.

According to Misra, R. and Michelle, M. (2013), there are also some

common impacts of stress upon human behavior and thoughts. They show

anger, feel depression, having problem in memorizing things, got irritate even

with no reason and start to feel sad. Stress also changes their behavior some

times. People start to eat too much or too little due to stress, some starts to

taking drugs or smoking because they feel it will give them relaxation.

According to Okoye (2010), stated that stress in biological or medical term

refers to the totality of the bodily responses to stimuli that tend to alter the

existing equilibrium. It is worthy to note that the individual response to this

stimulus varies from one individual to another as people react to situations

differently. Stress has been looked as an excessive nervous strain in an

individual.
 According to Sorenmekun (2013), defined stress as an intense pressure,

tension or force on the body. He stated that if such condition persists it may

damage the systems of the body. It then shows that if stress is not instantly

reduced or progressively reduced the body defense mechanism would begin to

break down systematically. If the intense pressure persists it may lead to death.

Related Studies

A research study by Jayanthi et al. (2014), observed that parent and

teachers expectations were the main sources of academic stress among the

adolescents, while adolescent girls had higher academic stress than boys.

According to the study of Sian Beilock (2011), said “We found that

cortisol, a hormone released in response to stress, can either be tied to a

student's poor performance on a math test or contribute to success, depending

on the frame of mind of the student going into the test,", associate professor in

psychology at a known university in Chicago. Working memory is the mental

reserve that people use to process information and figure out solutions during

tests. Math anxiety is fear or apprehension when just thinking about taking a

math test.

A study by Joshi (2014), noted that second year students felt more stress

in school factors than 1st year students. He also found out that prolonged and

severe stress may be psychologically damaging in that it may hinder a person's

ability to engage in effective behaviour and instead the person might end up

distancing and worst case scenario- not engage or be present at all.

A research by Rabbani et al. (2014), mentioned that there is a significant

and negative relationship between parental attachment and stress, while Parbhu

(2015) observed that students whose parent’s education is as literate level,

academic stress is higher than their counterpart.

According to Razia (2016), observed that adolescents of private schools

have more academic stress than their counterparts in government schools.

According to Leung et al., (2010), indicated that academic stress was a

risk factor that heightened student anxiety levels and that parental emotional

support was a protective factor that contributed to better mental health among

children .

According to Feld (2011), the most important stressors encountered by

students include high individual and external expectations, and stressful

surroundings as well as academic motivators such as academic tasks, ranks and

college recognition.

According to the researchers from Dr. Klaus Hansen's group (2010) at a

known university in Columbia, have just shown that external factors can stress

our cells through the control of our genes. "We found that stress-activating

factors can control our genes by turning on certain genes that were supposed to
be silenced. It is very important that some genes are on and others are off in

order to ensure normal development and correct function of our cells later in

life," says Hansen.

The study of Dr. Ed Ehlinger (2015), found that the ability to manage

stress was equally important. Students who said they were able to handle their

stress effectively performed much better than those who said they couldn’t. This

is an important finding, because it can persuade colleges to provide students

with the resource they need to learn how to manage stress, Dr. Ehlinger said. “If

students can manage their stress, then their stress level will not matter.”

The study of Brackney, B.E. and Karabchick, S.A. (2011), found emotional

stresses—ranging from credit card debt to failing a class or conflicts with

parents—had an average GPA of 2.72 while those who reported no significant

stress had an average GPA of 3.3. “While this may seem like a small difference in

GPA, when you are looking at over 9,000 students the impact of this difference is

huge,” said , director of Boynton Health Services and a lead author of the study.

The study of Schafer (2014), revealed that the most irritating daily hassles

were usually school-related stressors such as constant pressure of studying, too

little time, writing term papers, taking tests, future plans, and boring instructors.

Stress associated with academic activities has been linked to various negative

outcomes, such as poor health, depression and poor academic performance.

 A study by Dawood (2011), revealed that students’ stress affects their

academic performance. He further showed that the most frequently mentioned

stressor by students was school and fear related stressors. Many teenagers tend

to become non-conformist and fall prey to teenage depression in response to a

variety of growing up anxieties. However, stress induced fears and anxiety in

children adversely affects children’s performance at various levels.

The study of Sarmany (2014), studied the load and stress among

students. Results showed that students with low Grade Point Average (GPA)

used less effective stress coping strategies and assumed test situation as being

significantly more stressful girls showed higher level of stress than boys. A

significant negative correlation between GPA and actual duration of sleep was

observed.

According to the study of Xia and Sha. (2013), examined the relationship

among different stress sources, coping strategies and female university students’

negative feeling by applying the structural equation modeling analysis. The

results indicated that (1) the predictive effects of the stress and coping strategies

on negative feeling were significant. (2) The process model about stress, coping

strategies and negative feelings were different across sources in several aspects.

The study of Huan, Yeo, Ang, and Chong (2014), investigated the role of

optimism together with gender, on students’ perception of academic stress.

Results revealed a significant negative relationship between optimism and

academic stress in students. Gender was not a significant predictor of academic

stress and no two-way interactions were found between optimism and gender of

the participants.

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