Before I wrote the critical research paper, (which is the third paper) I wrote a research proposal. The reason why I wrote this research proposal was to present my research and explain the reasons why the government and other companies should fund my research.

 

Introduction:

Stress is how your body responds to a negative situation or demand. Stress can be divided into two categories physical and mental stress. However, for the purpose of this paper, stress would only mean mental stress. The focus of this paper is to study stress among male college students and how they deal with it. Recent studies have shown that college male students seek dangerous strategies to cope (suicide, drugs, etc) when they are under stress, while, other studies have also shown that men during the range of 18-25 years old are more likely to commit suicide than women. Hence, there might exist a correlation between men not seeking professional help when they are under stress and suicide rates. Therefore my hypothesis is why man does not seek professional help when they are under stress.

Background:

One of the main reason why mand does not seek professional help when they are under stress is that they think that men should be strong and powerful. This sense of manliness prevents them from looking for help when they needed. Therefore once they encounter a strong problem and they do not know how to deal with it most of the decision to kill themselves and commit suicide before they let other people see how vulnerable they are. Hence they may exist a correlation between manliness and the inability to seek professional help when they need it.

Some research has shown that most male college students who experience stress often seek dangerous activities to deal with it and those activities often leads to suicide. It is important to keep in mind that “suicide rate for boys ages 15 to 19 grew by 30 percent from 2007 to 2015” (Burell, 2018).  Also “according to the American College Health Association (ACHA) the suicide rate among young adults, ages 15-24, has tripled since the 1950s making suicide the second most common cause of death among college students.” (Burell, 2018). In other words, there has been researched studying what is the main caused of death among college students. However there has not been a lot of studies explaining what really causes these colleges student to commit suicide (is it academic stress, personal stress, or economic stress). Therefore in order to stop suicides rates, we need to find ways to understand why stress often leads to suicide and create solutions to stop these acts.

Lastly, there has been found 4 major causes of stress among colleges students. However, nobody has conducted research to find which of the four major causes of stress often leads to suicide. “ … we know that the mental stresses of college students come from four aspects: study conditions, employment situations, economic conditions, and personal factors. And the fourth aspect includes three parts: interpersonal communication, self-care ability, and family condition.” (Zhang, L., & Ji, H., 2011).

Methods:

Assari, S. (2018, September 19). Why stress is more likely to cause depression in men than in   women. Retrieved November 5, 2018, from http://theconversation.com/why-stress-is-more-Likely-to-cause-depression-in-men-than-in-women-57624

The article by Shervin Assari is going to help me support my claim that suicide is more common on male college students than in females because he explains why stress is more likely to cause depression on men than women. His article explains that even though women are more likely to be depressed than man, man struggle more and are more vulnerable than women when they are experiencing stress. In other words, women know better how to cope with depression. Assari said “We studied the effects of stressful life events men and women reported at the beginning of the study to their rates of depression 25 years later. We found that the effect of each life stressor on the risk of clinical depression was 50 percent stronger for men than women.” (2018). One of the reasons why Assari thinks that man does not know how to cope with stress is because they do not experience a lot of stress, “people who cope with stress all the time can get used to it”(Assari, 2018).

 

Burrell, J. (2018, October 24). College and Teen Suicide Statistics: What You Should Know.  Retrieved November 5,2018,from https://www.verywellmind.com/college-and-teen-suicide-statistics-357076

The article by Jackie Burrell is going to help me demonstrate that there exists a correlation between stress among male college students and suicide rates. Burrell in his article explains how suicide rates of male students significantly increased over the years. Also, the article in some areas try to explain and gives different reasons of what things could cause the male college student to take this horrific decision. Lastly, Burrell also gives some suggestions of how parents and college faculty can help prevent these acts.

 

Zhang, L., & Ji, H. (2011, October 1). Research on College Students’ Stresses and Coping Strategies. Retrieved November 5, 2018, from file:///home/chronos/u-99909cbf3e2261bf 76b670b5802330ef6e54921c/Downloads/12451-37352-1-SM (3).pdf

This research study by Ji and Zhang is the research from where I would be proposing an extension. This paper explains stress among college students and their different strategies to cope.  The authors make the claim that male students in China seek dangerous strategies to cope that often leads to suicide. But since the research was done in China I thought that the study should be extended and see if this problem is common around the world. Lastly, they found a variety of situations that caused stress on students and offers solutions on how to solve the problem however it does not explain which cause is more likely to cause students to commit suicide.

 

Ramya, N., & Parthasarathy, R. (2009). A study on coping patterns of junior college students. Indian journal of psychological medicine, 31(1), 45-7. From file https://www.ncbi.nlm.ni.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168080/

This research explains the different coping patterns between junior college students both male and female. This article would help me support my claim that male college students seek dangerous strategies to cope with stress. Some examples of how some males students cope includes drugs, alcohol, tranquilizers, and sex. It is obvious that the examples listed definitely one way or another would have negative consequences for the ones who practice any of those examples.

 

Suicide. (2018, May). Retrieved November 5, 2018, The National Institute of Mental Health  Information Resource Center from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml

Lastly, this article is going to help me support my claims and hypothesis stated above statistically. This article would help me prove that there might exist a correlation between stress on male college students and suicide rates. This article explains that males of ages 18-25 are more likely to commit suicides.

 

Outcomes:

One of the possible outcomes of extending the research would be finding what stressful events would make man seek dangerous strategies to cope instead of looking for professional help. If we find the reason why men do not know how to cope and overcome depression, different resources could be created (like mandatory classes on college on how to cope). Most students especially men would not take a coping class because they think that would make them appear more vulnerable, however, if coping classes are mandatory men would take advantage of the class even if they say they are only taking it because is mandatory. Lastly, the biggest outcomes of all would be finding whether there exists a correlation between stress and suicide rates men. Lastly, finding if there exists a correlation or not between manlines and not seeking for professional help is important because we could significantly lower suicides rates, save a lot of lives, and find new ways to teach men that looking for professional help when need it its not a weakness.