Today's students need to stay calm to enjoy college experience.

A 2008 survey by the Center for Students Health and Life revealed more than 25 percent of college students are doing either poorly or very poorly in managing stress. A 2004 survey of about 50,000 college students found that 45 percent said they had felt depressed and 63 percent said they had felt hopeless.

Campus Calm is a Web site for high school and college students, who in their eagerness to achieve good grades, cannot manage stress, causing depression, anxiety or insomnia in their lives.

The Web site provides tips, articles and experts' experiences for relieving stress and still doing well in a demanding academic environment. Student can also purchase extra material.

Campus Calm also seeks to teach students how to develop an identity that has nothing to do with grades or any other types of academic awards. Educators and parents are also addressed on the Web site.

"I'd rather skip an assignment than risk turning in a less-than-perfect paper," said Maria Pascucci-Maciejewski, president and founder of Campus Calm. "I graduated summa cum laude with a 3.92 GPA and fell into depression."

Pascucci is a full-time writer and entrepreneur. After overcoming her obsessive disorder, she created CampusCalm.com in March 2007 "to spread a dose of Campus Calm to stressed-out high school and college students world-wide so they do not have to suffer needlessly like I did," Pascucci said on her Web site.

Pascucci said she suffered as a perfectionist and stressaholic through her high school and college years. She said she never congratulated herself for graduating from college. She was always thinking about how to impress herself in the next step in her life, Pascucci said.

Under a category called "Did u know," CampusCalm.com contains several surveys and statistics about college students' mental health.

According to these studies, a poor diet and poor rest are two of the reasons for mental disorders.

Campus Calm offers a variety of helps against stress.

The biggest eye-opener Campus Calm moment for Kristen Szustakowski, editorial intern for the Web site, was when she was working on an article about taking care of the body. She had the habit of consuming energy drinks to help her stay awake all night during mid-terms or finals. That article went deep into keeping smart health habits and getting enough sleep, she said.

Since its creation, Campus Calm has had about 1,500 subscribers to its free biweekly email newsletter. These publications are about grades, stress and personal care.

Campus Calm is not a substitute for professional counseling, Pascucci said. Students who are facing those kinds of problems should find professional help and use Campus Calm as a source of inspiration and a site where they can share their experiences with other stressed out students, she said.

"If the Web site is used as a forum for students to learn from others about how to better manage their lives, the suggestions appear to be practical and useful," said Kristina Hansen, student therapist at BYU. "Sometimes, it is comforting to know that there are other people who have similar concerns and feelings as you do."

BYU students who are looking for some additional online resources can check BYU's Counseling & Career Center Web site. It has research-based information available, Hansen said.



Copyright Brigham Young University 5 Nov 2008