School-related stress is the most prevalent, untreated cause of academic failure in our schools. Untreated achievement stress may result in academic failure, behavioral or emotional problems, drug abuse, health problems, and even suicide. Since the stressed children of today will be the Type A adults of the 21st century, treating stress in the schools now may well relax our dangerously stressed society in the future.
Stress is the physiological and emotional reaction to psychological events.
Unrelieved, the cumulative, physical strain generated by psychological stress can harm the body. Stress is often experienced as a consistent, exaggerated, and overwhelming sense of urgency, often coupled with frustration. Achievement stress, triggered by school tasks, is a learned, inappropriate distress habit which impairs school performance. Achievement stress may be the result as well as the cause of poor academic performance. The precise role of stress in academic performance is blurred because of the complexity of anxiety's origin, measurement, and manipulation.