Meditation, Art & Anxieties
Alyse Judd s5015596
How can Art and Meditation help combat Anxeity within university students? As young adults, going to university is a life changing commitment with a lot of stresses and cause serious anxiety in some students. Currently 80% of students have experienced mental health issues and significant stresses. Abstract
Key Factors
Creative Examplars
This research proposal will examine a variety of elements of anxiety in university students and how we can combat it such as using art and meditation. As young adults, starting at university can be a life changing commitment with a lot of new experiences. All of this can cause students to feel quite anxious. Studies show that currently 80% of university students in Queensland alone suffer from anxiety. This a very high percentage and could be lowered with some coping techniques. Throughout the research there has been findings as to what causes anxiety in university students such as test anxiety, sleep, social media and phone use, finances, family and the intimidation of a new social life. There are so many more causes for anxiety within university students. Although, through research it has been found that using meditation and creative projects through out university can reduce anxiety drastically within students. Through out the research I have done personally study on myself and how using a form of creativity and mediation has helped calm my anxious nerves and focus on a healthy mind during hard times at university. Throughout this study I am hoping to explore more how we can incorporate creativity and meditation within universities and these solutions impact students. I am wanting to some how combine meditation and art together as a calming creative activity for all students.
The research journal articles found in relation to Anxiety within university students and coping mechanisms such as meditation and art were very interesting and brought light how those techniques really improve people’s mental health. Within the research, it was found that the most impacting effects for university students to struggle with anxiety was working whilst studying (1), excessive smartphone use, sleep quality (2) & test anxiety/ grades performance anxiety (3). All these distractions around university have been proven to decrease students grades and increase their stress and anxiety levels. After researching some of the many causes of anxiety within university students my studies were furthered on how we can fix the problem, more so multiple solutions towards helping students. Within the research, it was found that incorporating a meditation course within university degree helped students with their overall well-being and an understanding of the importance of mental health (4), doing creative projects in groups helped reduce anxiety (5) and colouring specifically mandalas helped a lot in decreasing anxiety in university students (6). These articles help further my research in causes and solutions towards anxiety in university students.
While researching, I found that the topic of Anxiety amongst young adults sparked the minds of many creative artists whom went on to create very strong pieces of work. Some illustrations I found by Gemma Correll showed all the humorous sides of anxiety and how to view it from different perspectives (7), to Beth Evans illustrations of turning anxiety into a little creature that follows her around and not letting it define herself (8) and Toby Allen’s Real Monsters pieces (9). Toby Allen’s piece has such a strong method of looking at anxiety and how to control it. Like Evans’, Toby Allen turns his anxieties into little characters to make them appear more manageable as physical entities. He uses this as a healing process of mental struggles in life. Defiantly Allen’s method of creation and drawing his feelings is quite critical information towards the research as it’s a method that could be interpreted into university students.
Methodologies/Method Over time of my research I’ve been more aware of my anxieties and how I feel as a university student. Observing my own anxieties isn’t enough so I took anonymous surveys of other university students and their anxieties whilst at university. The results and some answers I got from the interview were quite interesting. This is what I have found from the survey: - - - -
Majority of felt high anxiety whilst at university The most popular reasoning for anxiety in university students was trying to find a balance of university studies, social life, work and personal life It was 50/50 of people interested in using colouring books or an app for a way to help their anxieties Majority agreed universities should incorporate meditation or creative project time to help their anxieties
Creative Synthesis/Future Research Future research will look into the different types of art and meditation and which ones are the most effective on helping university students cope with their anxieties. Due to having anxiety being a quiet thing to speak up about, I’ve decided to create the possibly of an app for meditation. The app will feature calming reminders, daily mediation and life coaching advice throughout the app. Another future possibility for a creative action on all my research would be designing a colouring in mandala book specified for anxiety and calming colouring in.
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I believe that both ideas would work successfully as it allows students to privately and accessible at anytime when they need to calm or manage their anxiety. The real challenge is to create it so its completely beneficial to university students and that will be actually used by students.
References (1) Mounsey, Rebecca, Michael A. Vandehey, and George M. Diekhoff. 2013. “Working And Non-Working University Students: Anxiety, Depression, And Grade Point Average”. College Student Journal 47 (2): 379. (2) Demirci, Kadir, Mehmet Akgönül, and Abdullah Akpinar. 2015. “Relationship Of Smartphone Use Severity With Sleep Quality, Depression, And Anxiety In University Students”. Journal Of Behavioral Addictions 4 (2): 85-92. (3) Duraku, Zamira Hyseni. “Factors Influencing Test Anxiety Among University Students”. The Europe an Journal of Social & Behavioural Sciences 18.1 (2017): 2325-2334. Print. (4) Crowley, C., & Munk, D. (2017). An examination of the impact of a college level meditation course on college students well-being. College Student Journal, 51(1), 91. (5) Aaron, Ragan E., Kimberly L. Rinehart, and Natalie Ann Ceballos. “Arts-Based Interventions To Reduce Anxiety Level Among College Students”. Arts & Health 3.1 (2011): 27-38. Web. 20 Apr. 2017. (6) Curry, N., & Kasser, T. (2005). Can Coloring Mandalas Reduce Anxiety?. Art Therapy , 22 (2), 81 85. (7) Televičiūtė, Julija. 2016. “Artist Shows How It Feels To Live With Anxiety And Depression”. Bored Panda . http://www.boredpanda.com/anxiety-comics-funny-illustrations-gemma-correll/. (8) “We Almost Can’t Believe How Perfectly This Artist Illustrates Anxiety”. 2017. Hellogiggles . http:// hellogiggles.com/arist-illustrates-anxiety/. (9) “Real Monsters”. ZestyDoesThings Illustration. N.p., 2017. Web. 20 Apr. 2017.
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