Back-to-school anxiety: why it happens and how to calm it

Why going back to school is a particularly anxiety-inducing time

Back-to-school anxiety affects a huge number of high-school and university students, often as early as mid-August, well before the first class. Ipsos's national barometer on student mental health, published in 2025, shows just how widespread study-related anxiety is throughout the school year, with the start of term as one of its starting points¹.

What makes going back to school particularly hard is that it combines several sources of uncertainty at once: a new timetable, sometimes new teachers or new classmates, a new sleep schedule, a new workload to anticipate. The brain copes poorly with diffuse uncertainty: it finds it harder to prepare for “something vague” than for a specific event, even a stressful one. That's why back-to-school anxiety often feels like a knot in your stomach with no exact cause, rather than a clearly identified fear.

Reducing uncertainty before the big day

The most direct way to calm anxiety linked to uncertainty is to replace that vagueness with concrete reference points, even before the first day arrives:

• Look at your timetable as soon as it's available, even if it might still change a little.
• Get your back-to-school gear ready (bag, supplies, route) a few days ahead, not the night before.
• Get back to a normal sleep schedule gradually, shifting your bedtime and wake-up time by 15 to 20 minutes a day rather than all at once: sleep plays a direct role in emotional regulation and in consolidating what you learn⁴.
• Set one or two simple intentions for the first day (“I'll sit near this person,” “I'll ask a question in the first class I find interesting”). Research on implementation intentions — plans like “if this situation happens, then I do this” — shows that this kind of concrete plan clearly increases the chances of following through, precisely because it removes a decision that would otherwise have to be made in the heat of the moment².

On the first day back

On the morning itself, slow breathing remains one of the fastest tools to bring down physical activation: a 2018 review links this type of breathing to more calm and less anxiety within just a few minutes³. Before you leave, take five minutes with our anti-stress breathing guide, and remember that most people around you are feeling, to varying degrees, the same dread — even if it doesn't show on their face.

After the first day: staying the course

Back-to-school anxiety generally eases noticeably within the first one to two weeks, once concrete reference points are in place. If that's not the case and academic pressure settles in for the long haul, our guide on study pressure can help you build a pace you can sustain all year, not just for the first day.

When to talk to an adult or a professional

If the anxiety persists beyond a few weeks, comes with marked sleep or appetite trouble, or leads you to systematically avoid classes, it's no longer ordinary back-to-school anxiety: it's worth talking to a trusted adult, the school nurse, a doctor, or a psychologist.