Combatting stress is becoming more and more relevant in our daily lives. Stress has various negative effects including, depression, anxiety, and decreased academic performance in the case of students. Stress, however, is a naturally difficult condition to cure due it being that it varies from person to person. College students in particular are at high risk of elevated stress levels due to homework, studying, and many other factors. It is also noted that many college-age students who suffer from increased stress do not seek help whether it be out of fear or out of pride. Because of this, researchers have been conducting studies trying to find new, but effective, ways to deal with elevated stress in a way that college students would feel comfortable with. Some of these studies include using the modern advances of technology to find internet or app based intervention methods to combat stress in college students. One of these studies was done by Mathias Harrer and a group of researchers who wanted to test if internet based intervention methods would be more effective for treating stress in college students compared to older methods. This writing will showcase a study that points out an effective and almost costless new way to combat increased levels of stress using a platform that all college students are familiar and comfortable with.

Harrer and his fellow researchers had three main reasons to perform this study. First, researchers wanted to test if using app-based and internet interventions would be effective. They wanted to test if college students would be more responsive towards ways of help that were discreet. Harrer and his colleagues were aware that many college students were not open about their stress and would not seek professional assistance so they wanted to test a way where students could acquire help by themselves. Secondly, Harrer and his colleagues wanted to see if college students would accept an internet based intervention versus conventional forms of intervention, which had already failed to be successful for college students. Harrer et al. display this aim by stating “Finally, our aim was to explore intervention participants’ adherence to, and acceptance of, the intervention.” Thirdly, researchers were inspired to perform this study in hopes that successful results here would result in similar tests being done for more severe mental health conditions related to stress. Finally, Harrer wanted to test a treatment that could not only be easy for anyone to access but extremely cost effective as well. This would significantly lower the amount of students who would have been previously unable to access treatment due to transportation, financial status, etc.

Harrer and his fellow researchers were hoping for a certain set of results when they first started this study. For instance, Harrer et al. stated the aim of the study by saying they were hoping to “evaluate the effectiveness of an internet- and mobile-based intervention targeting university students with heightened stress levels.” Researchers were hoping that the internet based intervention would prove to be a more effective treatment for college students. Next, researchers wanted to show that students who used the internet based treatment would be more stress free compared to the students who used a more conventional or old style of stress treatment. They did this by testing one group of students with the internet based treatment and another group what they called a “waitlist control group” (WCG) (Harrer). Finally, researchers wanted see if their prediction about the positive effects on “…mental health outcomes, modifiable risk and protective factors, and college-related outcomes” would be correct (Harrer #). In other words, researchers wanted to see if their new internet based platform would also have a positive effect on other mental conditions, academic results, and the ability to identify possible risks that cause stress.

Harrer uncovered several principle findings during during their experiment. For example, the researchers found that “the intervention was well accepted among the large majority of students” (Harrer et al). This means that their prediction was correct and college students were very accepting of the internet and app based intervention they had experimented with. Next, researchers found that the internet based intervention had positive effects on both stress and academic outcomes for the students (Harrer et al). In fact, Harrer and his fellow researchers noted that the benefits of their study exceeded their expectations, especially when compared to previous trials. In addition, it found that levels of depression in the college students had decreased as well. However, the research also found that other items such as self esteem, self compassion, resilience, and perfectionism were not significantly affected by their study (Harrer et al). Finally, researchers gained negative feedback from the participants about the time taken on of some of the modules in the intervention (Harrer et al). This can only be improved upon in the future with follow-up studies and test to determine the optimal length for some of the modules in the intervention. Further testing is required but significant data has been collected to show several beneficial findings that resulted from the experiment.

We can draw several conclusions from Harrer’s study on the effectiveness of internet and app based intervention for stress. For instance, based off the findings of the study, more modern ways of intervention seem to be more effective against stress in college students compared to older methods. In addition to internet based interventions being more effective, college students that were participating in the study mostly were very accepting of the modern style of intervention. Next, we can conclude that more discreet way of dealing with stress related issues is more favorable for college students. It was reported in the study that many college students admitted to having stress issues but did not seek professional help. This is the advantage of an online based system. It lets students not reveal their identity when admitting to personal issues such as increased stress. Finally, it is concluded that a test that was effective against stress should also be effective against some more serious stress related conditions, such as depression. The only way to be certain; however, is to perform follow-up studies testing whether or not this internet-based system is as effective against depression and other similar stress-related conditions.

There were several limitations identified by the group of researchers who performed the experiment. One concern of the researchers was “women were overrepresented in the study sample” (Harrer et al). This is concerning because the researchers may have not have gotten the full data they needed. There could be a significant difference in the effectiveness of this experimental test in women compared to men. The only solution to this problem would be to redo the experiment and to have a larger sample size that includes as many men as women. Another concern for researchers was that their college participants received outside treatment in addition to the online based treatment they received from the experiment. Researchers figured if they were able to seek treatment via the experimental study why wouldn’t they also seek professional help. The concern still exists that many students who suffer from stress and stress related conditions are too shy or embarrassed to seek help so they would not come forward even for the more discreet online platform of intervention. The only way to confirm this suspicion would be to perform anonymous surveys in addition to gathering more experimental data. Regardless of the positive results of the study, more tests and experiments will need to be performed in order to gain a more accurate image of the effectiveness of internet based intervention for stress in college students. However, the new ideas presented in this study will impact the future of treating stress in college students. College students were overall accepting of the internet based intervention and satisfied with the results. With more research and studies, such as this one by Harrer and his fellow researchers, we can expect the problem of elevated stress in college students to decrease in the future.

Harrer, Mathias, et al. “Effectiveness of an Internet- and App-Based Intervention for College Students With Elevated Stress: Randomized Controlled Trial.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, Apr. 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5938594/.