LAUSR

Mental illness has become a prevalent health issue among college students. Within rigorous STEM based physiology programs, academic stress can negatively affect overall wellbeing. The objective of this study was to improve mental wellness and stress of undergraduate juniors in a rigorous physiology course by providing wellness trainings from campus clinicians. We hypothesized that a wellness training intervention would improve self-reported mental wellness, academic stress, and overall perceived stress of undergraduate physiology students. Students completed a survey in the first advanced physiology course at midterm in fall (F) 2021 (n=200, 99%). During the second advanced physiology course in the spring 2022 semester, students received six 30 minute wellness trainings delivered by campus counseling clinicians and were reassessed at the same time point in the spring (S) semester (n=170, 94%) as during the fall. Surveys included nonvalidated questions as well as the Perception of Academic Stress Scale and Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale. Following the wellness intervention, more students felt satisfied with their overall mental health and wellbeing (F 21%, S 41%), and fewer reported feeling anxious (F 89%, S 50%) and depressed (F 58%, S 26%). Students still felt academics were a significant sources of stress (F 96%, S 96%), but were less likely to feel academics negatively impacted their mental health (F 73%, S 47%). While responses improved over time on the Perception of Academic Stress Scale (34.7 ± 8.5 vs. 53.7 ± 11.5, p<0.001), there were no differences on the Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale (20.0 ± 6.8 vs. 20.6 ± 6.7, p=.0.20). In conclusion, wellness trainings embedded into rigorous physiology courses can positively impact undergraduate physiology students’ mental wellbeing. Potential mechanisms may include learning and practicing stress management techniques for academic stress. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.