Stress, Depression and Anxiety and Breathing Exercise among College Going Late Adolescents

Adolescence is the most important period of human life, a period of growing to maturity. Late adolescence, a period from eighteen to about twenty-two years is a period when transition from school to college takes place and thus is a highly stressful transitional phase. Stress represents any disruption or difficulty in the smooth course of life and occurs when demands on an individual exceed his or her Psychological effects of stress may manifest in forms of uncontrolled aggression, anxiety and depression. In context to the student population the most common psychological manifestation of stress are observed in the form of anxiety and depression. Diaphragmatic breathing has been reported to have beneficial consequences like increased oxygen supply to the brain and muscles, stimulation of parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes a state of calmness and quiescence, reduced anxiety and worry, improved concentration, release stress and tension. The study was conducted in three phases. In Phase-1, the pre-intervention phase, data was collected on 201first year students resided in hostel (Male, Female). Interview schedule, College Student stress scale developed by the researcher including five areas - academic, environmental, financial, family and hostel; Free-floating anxiety subscale of State, Trait and Free-floating anxiety Scale (Tripathi and Rastogi, 1986; Beck Depression Inventory (Hindi Version by Arora &Prashant, 1988) were administered on 201 subjects. After explaining the purpose of the study and instructions for each test the data was collected in the class room. The Phase-2 of the study was intervention phase for which high stress subjects were selected out of the 201 scored high on all the measures of stress, anxiety, depression These high stress subjects were divided in two groups, Intervention (28 boys&28 girls) and non intervention group (30 boys&28 girls). Ss in the intervention group were taught breathing exercise regularly for five weeks. No intervention was done for the nonintervention group. In the Phase-3, the post-intervention phase, Ss of both these groups were again assessed on measures of stress and strain after the 5 week. Data from pre-intervention and Post-intervention phases of these 114 Ss served as the basis for analysis for the second part of the study. Reduction in mean scores on measures of both stress and strain within the intervention group but not in the non-intervention group indicated the effectiveness of practicing diaphragmatic breathing for reducing stress and its positive effects among both boys and girls.