Assessing Stress, Anxiety, and Mental Well-Being among College Students in Gurugram, India

The need to attend higher education institutions has grown and, with this growth, so has the concern about mental health. Academic, personal and social issues that can impact mental health have become a greater concern in higher education as students attend institutions. Having an awareness of the experiences of stress, anxiety and well-being of students is a critical part of designing institutional support systems. The present study was designed to evaluate the levels of perceived stress, anxiety related experience, mental wellbeing of the undergraduate and post graduate students studying in higher education institutes in Gurugram, Haryana. The study used a research design of quantitative, descriptive and cross sectional. The primary data were gathered by using a structured online questionnaire through convenience sampling and snowball sampling in which 181 students participated. The questionnaire contained adapted items of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7), the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI). Descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) was used to analyse data. Findings showed that many of the students reported having the symptoms of anxiety – worrying too much, and not being able to relax, being restless, and worrying about things in the future. Likewise, quite a large share of respondents reported being stressed when dealing with academic and personal matters. Overall mental well-being was assessed and satisfaction was found to be different across each of the life domains; higher satisfaction was reported for personal well-being and standard of living, and lower satisfaction for health, personal achievement and future security. The results suggest that student wellbeing is a multi-faceted concept and call for a greater focus on the importance of building on institutional efforts to raise awareness around mental health issues, increase access to counselling and also provide more holistic support for students. The study provides context-specific evidence on the mental health of students and provides practical implications for universities and college campuses interested in improving students' psychological health. The keywords used in this study are college students, mental well-being, perceived stress, anxiety, higher education and Gurugram.