Stress Among Muslim Youths

Stress Among Muslim Youths:

Causes and Intervention Strategy (1)

Stress is the most common phenomenon that every human being experiences in different life situations. The very fate of human suffering in worldly life is evident from Qur'anic verse: "Verily We have created man into toil and struggle." (90:4)

The Qur'anic verse vividly car­ries the meaning that 'man is born into troubles as the sparks fly upward', hence, man is born to strive and struggle. It is a historical truth that all men and women irrespective of being young or old are bound to struggle for survival as always human behavior is directed towards pleasure and away from pain. Therefore, stress is a condition, which is embedded in human striving and struggle.

Stress, a very common be­havioral state influences one's psychosocial makeup. It is most likely to originate from three regions, viz. (a) intra-individual region, (b) social region, and (c) governmental/political re­gion either independently or in conjunction thereof.

When the magnitude of stress is in consonance with individual's stress enduring lim­it (SEL) then coping with stress is a normal function and it denotes to a balanced state. But there are occasions where stresses are not in consonance with one's SEL and conse­quently detrimental conse­quences appear causing failures, breakdowns and col­lapses and it confirms to the old saying that 'even an addi­tion of a straw can break camel's back'.

It is also observed that usually maladjustment or stres­ses experienced especially by youths are the result of the lack of understanding of oneself (self-concept). This is what I have to emphasize that most of the problems of youth, espe­cially the Muslim youths lie within themselves as they are usually in the state of fantasy, rarely realizing their potential strength and weaknesses and subsequently fail to relate their qualities with their aspired goals and objectives. There­fore, incompatibility between self-concept and life goal tar­gets keeps youths to experi­ence failure leading to stress and frustration.

Realizing the immense im­portance of stress, the objec­tive of the present empirical investigation was to isolate stresses, finding the relation­ship of stress with self-concept, and to develop strategy to cope with stress for the positive growth and development of youthful Muslims.

Study was conducted on 200 Muslim youths striving for their job career. They were in the age range between 20-25 years. For measuring the mag­nitude of perceived stress, a scale was developed compris­ing 15-stresses. Mohsin's self­-concept inventory was admi­nistered to measure level of self-concept and a biographi­cal information blank was pre­pared to tap respondent's biographical information.

The findings of the study revealed that government's unfair policies, prejudice, increasing unemployment, bias selection, unequal competition, lack of financial support, and family responsibility are per­ceived as high stressors. As a result, its moderate stress-ef­fects are fear of being re­jected in job market, lack of guidance from family mem­bers, uncertain life goals, and lack of guidance from society. Stresses causing low-stress in­clude lack of knowledge, social insecurity, lack of competence, and lack of confidence. More­over, it is also found that low self-concept is instrumental for high stress among Muslim youths.

It is suggested that increas­ing stressful and noxious ex­periences by Muslim youths in this present contemporary world could be properly man­aged by opting intervention strategies that follows:
Exercise (Salah i.e. prayer is referred as the best means of exercise); Zikr; Reading of the Qur'an; Self-Appraisal; Own­ing up to stress; 6. Awareness campaigns for developing and shaping Islamic Shar'iah based personality; Manpower plan­ning of Muslim youths.

At length, it is suggested that proper utilization of Mus­lim youth's resources is not possible unless manpower planning is initiated and other intervention strategies are transformed in a convenient way into habits so that stress causing factors may be mini­mized to within 'Stress Endur­ing Limit' (SEL).

Dr. Shamim Ahmad Ansari, Reader, Dept. of Psychology, Ali­garh Muslim University, Aligarh.