Social Support as a Buffer Against Stress and Depression Among Military and Nonmilitary College Student’s
. The study of social support as a buffer to stress and depression, in both military and nonmilitary college students, is essential for developing resilience against triggering factors for the stress related conditions. In the context of this research proposal, social support will be defined as the people that a college student can depend on to alleviate the impact of stress and . The provided definition borrows from the four types of social supports that Bryson and Bogart (2020) provides. These four categories of social support include emotional, tangible, association, and informational. For example, a military college student will need to have insights into how they can address their depression, have a sense of belonging, have a healthy esteem status, and receive tangible tasks (Pease, Monteith, Hostetter, Forster & Bahraini, 2015). Military and nonmilitary college students, face diverse stressing scenarios that, when not checked, can lead to depression. Due to the negative impacts of these conditions in all spheres of a student’s life, one will need to establish formidable social support that can help them maneuver the problems that depression will occasion. With robust social support, military and nonmilitary students who have been exposed to triggering stressors such as past war scenarios and work related accidents will maintain good physical and mental health. Social support can be family members, friends, college counterparts, or even professionals who will help clinically depressed students manage their mental health issues. Ozbay, Johnson, Dimoulas, Morgan, Charney & Southwick (2007) write that positive social support will enhance resilience in people at risk of stress and depression. Hence, since college life has different types of stressors that can form a foundation for depression, regardless of whether a student is in the military or not, they will give insights into how they can best handle such eventualities.
Stress and Depression
Over the years, scholars have shown that psychological stress has significant impacts on mental and physical health. Today, there are numerous news articles on stress and its harmful consequence on its victims’ quality of life. For instance, because of financial challenges and family alienation, some college students have difficulties coping and this could elicit depressive symptoms. According to Slavich (2016), the definition of stress has been numerously revised by different scholars, resulting in complications and confusion in understanding this mental health concept. In this paper, stress will be defined as how the human body reacts to changes that necessitate an adjustment or response. A person can stress both positive and negative situations such as lack of money or admission into college. One hand positive stress is referred as eustress while negative stress is called distress. Eustress is triggered by positive effects such as being accepted to a demanding academic program while distress can be caused by lack of fees or the demanding nature of the course one is pursuing. The distress type of stress can arise from life changes such as being alienated from one’s family and joining a college far away from home.
Stress
Thus, it means that stress is not entirely bad or abnormal, but the most important thing is how one handles their situation. Chronic stress can wear one down, thus affecting how one performs in their activities of daily living. Stress is a significant precursor for depression, with the latter being a mental health condition that requires one to be medically diagnosed. As mentioned above stress is defined as how the human body reacts to internal or external changes which trigger a bodily response. The changes can be physical, mental or emotion which trigger a specific reaction in individuals. For instance, when one is separated from their family, this change will have an emotional toll on an individual. One may react by feeling homesick or not concentrating on their studies.
Depression
Depression is different from stress although the latter can precede or can be the causative factor for the former. Whereas depression is a mental health disorder, stress is not a mental health and a person can manage it appropriately. Depression is occasioned by mood disorders that cause persistent feelings of sadness and lack of interest in activities of daily living. For instance, when one is depressed, they will not have interest in eating or exercising general body hygiene. Depression can be occasioned by different triggers such as living situations and can also be caused by genetic factors and brain chemicals (Yang et al., 2015). Causes of stress can be a combination of biological, emotional, or social cause of distress. These factors can cause changes in the brain function such a chemical balances or altered activities in the certain neural circuits in the human brain.
Social Support as Buffer
When one is stressed or depressed, social support can be an effective approach to alleviate their problems. Social support refers to the people either professionals or not that one can rely to reduce the impact of stress or depression. For example, one’s friends in college can be a viable source of social support. When a student is stressed they can seek solace in their classmates or friends. Also, social support can be professional psychologists from whom a student can seek help from when depressed or stressed. Ross et al. (2020), social support systems have a moderating effect on stress and depression outcomes. Social support for both military and nonmilitary college students will help alleviate the symptoms of stress and depression. Robust social support mechanisms are, therefore, critical for boosting academic and social performance among students.
Significance of the Study
The study on social support as a buffer to stress and depression in both military and nonmilitary college students will provide a learning paradigm for understanding how mental health victims can leverage social support to cope with these conditions. The research’s focus is designed to assist the students and education policymakers in using the findings to create a robust support system for students suffering from extreme stress and depression symptoms. A common misconception that the study will attempt to address is that nonmilitary students have a low probability of developing severe stress and depression compared to military students majorly, because of the latter’s nature of work. Hence, one acknowledges that depression in military students should be quasi-independent in that it should be two-tailed. The study is essential since it will explain that the risk of a student developing stress or depression depends on their resilience and the robustness of their social support system.
Problem Statement
Both military and nonmilitary college students experience diverse stressing situations that can exacerbate the risk of depression. According to Boyraz et al. (2015), over 50% of college students report a history of possibly traumatic events, although there are diverse causes for these mental issues. Other studies have shown that exposure to traumatic events can affect many aspects of an individual’s life, including their ability to perform optimally in their academic engagements. In the past few years, military personnel has increasingly enrolled in education programs to bolster their career profiles. Some personnel endured hardship experiences, reflected in integrating with the rest of the college populations. According to Fredman et al. (2019); Whiteman (2013), there is little understanding of the military personnel’s unique needs in undertaking academic programs in colleges. The lack of data-based investigation on how these students cope in colleges, especially concerning their mental and social behaviors, necessitate researchers to focus on this area.
Further, Romero et al. (2015) note that military students face difficulties when integrating with their civilian college counterparts majorly due to the military culture they are accustomed to, which leads to the development of stress and depression. These studies indicate that there is a need for researchers to study how military students can build resilience against stress and depression. As mentioned above, these mental health issues are not a preserve of college students who serve in the military, but other students have pressing problems that consist of stressors that can lead to depression. Some examples of stressors that students can face while in college include insufficient finances, demanding academic expectation from the society, alienation from one’s family, and peer pressure such as introduction to drugs abuse. Boyraz et al. (2015) write established that many college students experiencing post-traumatic depression symptoms regardless of their career line. This implies that even civilian students are prone to stressors that can lead to depression. The current study aims at establishing the significance of social support in building resilience against stress and depression in military and nonmilitary students.
Preliminary Literature Review
Several studies have been conducted on the association of social support and stress and depression. The focus will be to show the existing research gaps regarding social support and stress and depression in college students. In a study by Whiteman et al. (2013), it was ascertained that service members had fewer instances when they needed social support than their civilian counterparts. This finding was influenced by the fact that military personnel were hesitant to seek for social support services from their peers and trained professionals within the college setup. However, with time the cases of military college students with depression who needed help increased significantly. The study underscores that civilian college students also experience a myriad of stressors that can lead to depression. Whiteman et al. (2015) indicate that PTSD depression symptoms are more rampant in male college students than in their female counterparts, which shows a need for robust social support among males. Romero et al. (2-15) note a need to improve intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships among college students, especially student service personnel. In this study, it was established that students who are in military service tend to avoid social support as a coping mechanism. The hesitation to seek professional social support services could be due to the training military people receive which give them a sense of self sufficiency. Therefore, a military officer may be reluctant to seek for help when depressed since it might appear as a sign of weakness. This trend lays the foundation for more severe mental health conditions such as depression.
There is a need to integrate mental health interventions into early college life for students. Due to the hardships associated with college life and military personnel’s challenges in their career, many students will exhibit depression and stress symptomology. These findings suggest that students who enter college without adequate social support will experience difficulties coping with college life’s dynamicity. The additional stressors that come with transitioning to college, such as academic burdens and being away from one’s family, are factors of concern regarding emotional resilience in nonmilitary students (Boyraz et al., 2015). These trigger factors often exacerbate students’ distress, thus placing them at greater risk for stress and depression. Whiteman et al. (2013) found that the implications of social support among both civilians and service members suggest that having robust social circles leads to positive mental health and academic adjustment. In conjunction with screening programs, social support can play an important role, mainly because military college students are exposed to trauma. For example, factoring racism and sexual orientation will also help create resilience programs in these students.
Further, Whiteman et al. (2015) acknowledge that family and friends’ social support helps reduce the severity of depression and stress symptoms among college students. However, there is insufficient scholarly evidence on the implication of social support from civilian college peers. The study of military service personnel shows that peers’ emotional support may be inadequate to buffer against depression and stress. Consequently, educators must understand that lower levels of social support among students, regardless of whether they are active military, could substantially impact how they fare in their academic and social life while in college. Moreover, Whiteman et al. (2015) ascertained that colleges are ill-prepared to handle military personnel-specific experiences related to depression and stress. This study proves a gap in developing mechanisms for social support that are tailored for each group, which will help college students become resilient to mental health issues.
Research Methodology
Research Methodology
Literature review will be the primary methodological tool that will be employed in this study. Fundamentally, the focus will be on scholarly articles that center on social support against depression and stress among military and nonmilitary college students. As such, the literature review will assume a broad scope of investigation of the available evidence on depression and stress among military and nonmilitary college students and the available social support mechanism. These systems can be used to buffer against these mental conditions. A list of crucial targeted keywords will be developed in achieving this, which will be used to search for relevant articles on the subject matter.
Research Design
The research design for this study will be explorative whereby the main aim is to explore the topic on depression, stress, and social support structures in colleges and how they benefit the students. Through the explorative research design, it will be possible to clarify the exact nature of the problem at hand. Therefore, an online social support survey will be made available to the selected persons who will be the respondents for this study. In this surveys, respondents will be asked of their awareness of the prevalence of stress and depression in colleges and the social support structures available. The survey questions will focus on both military and nonmilitary students with several enhancing questions. The target population for this study are the college students, both military and nonmilitary and college educators and policymakers.
Hypothesis
- The lower levels of social support reported on military student’s the higher levels of college student stressors on the military students and the greater the military student’s depression scores.
- The lower levels of social support reported on nonmilitary student’s the higher levels of college student stressors on the nonmilitary students and the greater the nonmilitary student’s depression scores.
- Military individuals with more or less social support will report different levels of stress and depression compared with their nonmilitary students given the same conditions.
References
Boyraz, G., Horne, S. G., Armstrong, A. P., & Owens, A. C. (2015). Post-traumatic stress predicting depression and social support among college students: Moderating effects of race and gender. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 7(3), 259.
Bryson, B. A., & Bogart, K. R. (2020). Social support, stress, and life satisfaction among adults with rare diseases. Health Psychology.
Fredman, S. J., Marshall, A. D., Le, Y., Aronson, K. R., Perkins, D. F., & Hayes, J. A. (2019). Interpersonal relationship quality mediates the association between military-related post-traumatic stress and academic dysfunction among student veterans. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 11(4), 415.
Ozbay, F., Johnson, D. C., Dimoulas, E., Morgan, C. A., Charney, D., & Southwick, S. (2007). Social support and resilience to stress: from neurobiology to clinical practice. Psychiatry (Edgmont (Pa. : Township)), 4(5), 35–40.
Pease, J. L., Monteith, L. L., Hostetter, T. A., Forster, J. E., & Bahraini, N. H. (2015). Military service and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in a national sample of college students. Crisis.
Romero, D. H., Riggs, S. A., & Ruggero, C. (2015). Coping, family social support, and psychological symptoms among student veterans. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 62(2), 242.
Ross, A. M., DeVoe, E. R., Steketee, G., Emmert-Aronson, B. O., Brown, T., & Muroff, J. (2020). Outcomes of a reflective parenting program among military spouses: The moderating role of social support. Journal of Family Psychology.
Slavich G. M. (2016). Life Stress and Health: A Review of Conceptual Issues and Recent Findings. The teaching of Psychology (Columbia, Mo.), 43(4), 346–355. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628316662768
Whiteman, S. D., Barry, A. E., Mroczek, D. K., & MacDermid Wadsworth, S. (2013). The development and implications of peer emotional support for student service members/veterans and civilian college students. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 60(2), 265.
Yang, L., Zhao, Y., Wang, Y., Liu, L., Zhang, X., Li, B., & Cui, R. (2015). The Effects of Psychological Stress on Depression. Current Neuropharmacology, 13(4), 494–504. https://doi.org/10.2174/1570159×1304150831150507