Utilization, stress coping strategies and undergraduate students.

Any change that puts either a physical, mental, or psychological strain on a person is said to be stressful. The main purpose of the study was to assess the perceived utilization of stress coping strategies by undergraduate students in selected departments in School of Basic
Medical Science, University of Benin. Participants included 320 students randomly selected from 100-500 levels from Department of Medical Biochemistry and Department of Nursing Science. A descriptive cross sectional study was employed in this study. The Instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences was used to analyse the data collected using tables, means, simple percentage and frequency. Findings revealed that there is moderate level of perceived stress amongst undergraduate students in School of Basic Medical Science. This is due to the fact that the mean scores of the items under the level of perceived stress of undergraduate students were above the cut off mean of 2.00 thus resulting in a grand mean of 2.63, a source of stress identified was
examination 256(87.7%) and common strategies they used in combating stress was logging in on any social media platform, sleep, pray and listening to music. The results of this study thus call on need for emphasis on positive and effective stress coping strategies in the school curriculum and encouraging the need for students to visit a Psychologist at the school's
Department of Guidance and Counselling. Also, academic related stress will prevent quality outcome and output of graduates to the society, therefore, there is the need to incorporate the teaching of stress management to undergraduate students. This will go a long way in equipping them with the skills necessary to cope with different forms of stress they encounter during the course of their studies