ABSTRACT
Stress is a specific adaptive reaction of an individual to a variety of physical or psychological challenges. The term "stress" refers to the process involving perception, appraisal, and response to harmful, threatening, or challenging events or stimuli. This specific stress reaction depends on the nature and intensity of the stressor, the social and cultural context, and on the subject's ability to evaluate and to cope with the problem as well as his vulnerability to stress. To assess sources of stress among Fayoum university students, symptoms of stress, stress levels and the coping strategies they used to overcome these stresses, comparing between medical and non medical students as well as between academic and clinical medical groups and between male and female students. This is a descriptive study of 400 students implemented in three faculties; Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Education and Faculty of Social Service in Fayoum University. A self-administered Arabic questionnaire including background characteristics and sources of stress and a validated structured Arabic questionnaire was used to assess the stress level. The sources of stress related to study or to family were the most common sources of stress. The four most frequently reported stressors, feeling tired of long study hours [81. 7%], family adherence to know all their friends [80.7%], feeling annoyance to be deprived of attending lectures when coming late [79.8%] and when parents quarrel with them if they do something wrong [78.4%], in that order. The mean family sources score was significantly higher among females than males [p=0.000]. It was clear that Fayoum university students were exposed to a variety of interpersonal and environmental stressors. These findings indicated the need for stress management programs specific to the needs of college students