Over-scheduled, over-worked, and constantly pushing to get more done—that description of a stressed mentality is now showing up in young students as well as adults. To talk about the growing role stress plays in our lives, the Stress Management Task Force, in collaboration Madison Youth & Family Services and MADE in Madison, held its first community conversation on April 21 to shed more light on the issue.

The issue of stress took a front seat this year after a recent study of Daniel Hand High School (DHHS) students showed more young people are finding stress is negatively affecting their lives.

More than 1,000 students completed the bi-annual Search Institutes Developmental Assets and Behavior Survey in November 2015. In the survey, students were asked to grade 15 different environmental stress factors on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most stressful. Insufficient time to sleep, difficult classes, large amounts of homework, too little time, and not enough free time or down time were revealed to be the top five factors, according to MADE Coalition Coordinator Catherine Barden.

Barden said elevated stress levels can being linked to substance abuse as students look for ways to combat stressors in their lives.

“We kept asking why [youths abuse drugs] and it kept coming back to, ‘Well, we are really stressed—that’s why and we are doing it to self medicate,’” she said.

Community members at the task force meeting came together to try and discuss healthy ways to manage and identify stress and learn tools to help cope with stress. Students from the Data Roll Out group, which is composed of students from Peer Advocates, LIFE, and Perspectives—all MADE and Madison Youth & Family Services programs— attended to speak about things they would like to see changed at the high school.

Member Patrick Fahey, a junior and student-athlete at DHHS, said they were hoping to look at changing the homework policy, particularly as it applies to honors courses and the pressure to succeed that students face.

“We are meeting with [Superintendent of Schools] Tom Scarice, [First Selectman] Tom Banisch and [Principal Anthony] Salutari,” he said. “We have a list of things we would like to talk about that we might want to implement into the school.”

Assistant Superintendent of Schools Gail Dahling-Hench said the concerns of students and parents are not falling on deaf ears. She said the schools have looked at the impact of stress and homework on students.

“We have a health curriculum that was revised and actually deals with stress specifically at every grade level starting with a vocabulary introduction in grade 2 building to conflict resolution and what we can do to deal with stress and identifying stressors and how stressors take over our lives,” she said.

Throughout the discussion, led by Selectman Joan Walker, community members identified work, school, relationships, and time management as key stressors in their lives. Guilford DAY Prevention Coordinator Dana Hilmer said identifying stressors is an important step.

“Kids really do feel a lot of pressure,” she said. “We are really trying to look at what we can do to address stress whether it be in the family or in the community or the kids individually or in the school.”

Madison Youth & Family Services Board member Art Symonds said it is also important to look at the role parents play in a student’s stress levels.

“If your parent is running around stressed all the time with a million activities, you are teaching your kids to live like that and giving them the idea that is the normal way to live,” he said.

Hilmer said stress is a normal part of trying to succeed, but that it is important to keep everything in perspective.

“We all want our kids to be happy, we all want our kids to be successful,” she said. “But it really is the happiness piece that comes first and then leads to success.”

The Stress Management Task Force meets every second Thursday of the month at 7 p.m. at Madison Youth & Family Services. To learn more, visit www.madeinmadison.org.