Reaction to Stress and How to Cope with it: A Case at Anadolu University

Individuals, who spend an important part of their lives on education, are inevitably exposed to stress when they begin undertaking more responsibilities and getting anxious about their future lives after ending their education lives. In other words, one can easily observe the symptoms of stress in individuals’ personal lives as soon as their school lives come to an end. In this respect, in order to obtain information about students’ thoughts regarding stress and about the mechanisms they use to cope with stress, the present study was conducted with students attending Anadolu University. In the study, a questionnaire was applied to a total of 600 students from such faculties of Anadolu University Faculty of Communication Sciences, Literature Faculty, Education Faculty, School of Physical Education and Sports, and Faculty of Pharmacy in the academic year of 2016-2017. Among all these students, 587 of them responded to the questionnaire. In the study, the purpose was to determine the students’ views about the mechanisms they use or avoid using under stress, about their coping with stress and about the causes of their stress. In line with their responses, the findings were examined under related dimensions, and the relationship between the most frequent defense mechanisms and the response categories was tested using Pearson Correlation. In addition, Cochran Q test was applied whether there was a significant relationship between the most frequent defense mechanisms of reaction formation and spoilt reaction, the rationalist approach and the fanciful approach. Consequently, there were significant relationships between the response categories, and significant relationships were found between certain defense mechanisms.