Understanding Academic Stress among Adolescents

Abstract

Any individual who progresses through life goes through various changes and transitions where ‘stress’ becomes invariably part of the journey. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to the concept of academic stress as the transitions occur at an individual and social level. It, therefore, becomes imperative to understand the sources and impact of academic stress to derive adequate and efficient intervention strategies. This review aims to understand academic stress at a bio psychosocial level highlighting the impact and sources of academic stress. For the literature review, articles were collected from online databases such as EBSCO, ProQuest, Springer, PubMed, Jstor and Google Scholar. The literature search was done using keywords academic stress, academic anxiety, coping, physiological reactions of stress, academic performance, stress and mental health.The prevalence rate of stress varied from 15%-45% in studies conducted after 2000. The review examines stress and its physiological impact, cognitive and social influences, sources of stress detailing Indian findings.