The effects of proximal and distal forms of stress on college student mental health and affective well-being

The present study examined the role of proximal and distal stress, as well as social connection on college student socioemotional health. Students were enrolled in a large-scale, digital phenotyping study of well-being at a large US university (45% engineering students). The present analyses were estimated using self-report data from the 2021 spring academic term. Students completed a baseline survey querying about major life events (MLE) and 9 weekly surveys capturing stress, social connection, mental health, and affect. Multilevel modeling tested whether current mental health and affect could be accounted for by separate and interacting influences of within-person fluctuations in stress, between-person stress differences, social connection, and MLE. Elevation in stress from week-to-week and across students exacerbated emotional struggles. Boosts in social connection across students attenuated emotional struggles. Effective stress management particularly through social connection, may be important enough to overshadow variation in outcomes due to earlier events in life associated with negative outcomes.