Research On The Emotional Stress And Coping Styles Of College Students Under The Covid-19 Pandemic

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,the study and life of college students have been greatly affected.Due to repeated epidemics and strict government policies,college students have experienced strong negative emotions.Based on interviews with 14 college students,this study concluded the emotional stresses of college students during the pandemic,including fear,depression,anger,and confusion.To cope with the emotional stress caused by the pandemic,college students have adopted emotion-focused and problem-focused coping strategies.The former includes accepting the current situation,reflecting and adjusting,and emotional catharsis,which focuses on regulating negative emotions.The latter includes expanding connections,enrich life,block information,which focuses on solving the problems that cause emotional stress.Combined with Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional theory of stress and coping,the factors that influence college students’ coping with emotional stress include cognitive evaluation and social support.Due to different primary evaluations of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,the expression of emotional stress differs among college students.When faced with changes caused by the pandemic,college students evaluate their ability to cope with the pandemic and will actively adapt to the changes.However,when they feel that their coping resources and abilities are insufficient to effectively deal with the impact of the pandemic,they may adopt more negative coping strategies.Social support includes subjective emotional support and objective material and information support.Sufficient social support means that college students have more coping resources and abilities.Therefore,when individuals receive social support,they will adopt more positive coping strategies.Based on the analysis of these two influencing factors,this paper proposes two ways for school social workers to intervene in college students’ emotional stress: help college students establish positive cognition,and enhance social support for college students.