Symptoms and health complaints and their association with perceived stress: students from seven universities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Aim

This research assessed the relationships between perceived stress and a range of self-reported symptoms and health complaints in a representative sample of students across UK universities.

Subjects and methods

The data comprised 3,706 students and was collected between 2007 and 2008 simultaneously at seven universities in three countries of the UK: England, Wales, and Republic of Northern Ireland. A self-administered questionnaire measured health complaints (22 symptoms) and Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale. Sociodemographic and lifestyle data were also collected. Factor analysis developed four groups of health complaints: psychological, circulatory/breathing, gastro intestinal, and pains/aches.

Results

The symptoms most often reported as having occurred sometimes/very often in the last 12 months were fatigue (61.0 %), headache (59.5 %) and difficulties to concentrate (54.4 %), while back (43.3 %) and neck/shoulder pain (39.4 %) were also frequent. Multinominal logistic regression revealed a clear association and a linear trend between increasing level of stress and a higher frequency of psychological symptoms which remained significant after adjustment for many other factors. For circulatory/breathing symptoms and for pains/aches, associations with perceived stress were only significant at higher perceived stress levels. There was no association between perceived stress and gastrointestinal symptoms. For most symptoms, poor health was consistently associated with higher frequency of symptoms across all four symptom groups. Similarly, better quality of life was associated with lower frequency of psychological and circulatory/breathing symptoms, but not for the other two symptom groups.

Conclusions

The different profiles of reported complaints and their association with perceived stress, poor health and low quality of life should give rise to tailored interventions in this young population.