Nature of stress

  • Stressor: stimuli/ events in environment that place demands on us
  • Response: stress (physiological? Cognitive? Behavioural?
  • Person-situation Interaction: Transaction between organism & environment

Stressors (Situations)

  • Eliciting Stimuli: Place demands on well-being & require us to adapt
  • Microstressors: daily hassles
  • Catastrophic Events: occur unexpectedly..affect large #’s of people
  • Major Negative Events: stressful life events
  • *Positive events can causes equal amounts of stress

Measuring stressful life events

  • Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SSRS): item measured social readjustment
  • Each item assigned point value on a scale of 100 (e.g death of spouse: 100 & marriage: 50)
  • Points- Life Change Units

Student Stress Scale

  • Scores 300+ high health risk, 150-300 health risk , <150 (1/3) chance of health risk

Stress Response (4 aspects of appraisal process)

1)      Appraisal of demands of situation (WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO?)

2)      Appraisal of your resources available (HOW DO I COPE?)

3)      Judgment of consequences of situation (WHAT ARE THE COSTS TO ME?)

4)      Appraisal of personal meaning (WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT MY BELIEFS IN MYSELF? WORLD?)

Chronic Stress & the GAS

  • General Adaption Syndrome= GAS (Physiological reaction to prolonged stress)
  • 3 phases: Alarms, Resistance, Exhaustion

Alarm (similar to flight or fight)

  • Activation of sympathetic nervous system AND release of adrenaline
  • Cannot last indefinitely…parasympathetic system tries to restore homeostasis (if stressor persists- so does response)
  • Body’s releases its chief stress fighting hormone: Cortisol
  • Cannot last indefinitely: Parasympathetic system tries to restore homeostasis
  • If stressor persist- so does response!

Resistance

  • Continued recruitment of resources, can last long time, but resources being depleted
  • Eventually no longer sufficient; depends on individual’s general health, support etc.

Exhaustion

  • Resources dangerously depleted
  • Increased vulnerability to disease
  • Can manifest itself with cardiovascular problems; immune system difficulties
  • You collapse & are sick after finals (resistance) when the vacation begins!

Stress can lead to:

  • Increase in chronic conditions (arthritis, bronchitis, emphysema)
  • Can worsen existing medical conditions
  • Not surprisingly, stress hormones can damage the heart
  • Can cause breakdown in immune system functioning
  • Increase with # of stressors 3 lasting increases health risks

Protective Factors [Why do some people suffer psychological and/or physiological distress and others don’t?

Hardiness

  • Commitment: What they do is important e.g stress at work but like your job
  • Control: STRONGEST COMPONENT: have control (perceived) over situation e.g problems with roommate but you know how to hand her
  • Challenge situation is a challenge not a treat e.g you’re stuck on holiday without your VISA card

Vulnerability & Protective Factors [Vulnerability factors increases susceptibility to stress]

What reduces resistance?

  • Lack of support network
  • Poor coping skills
  • Pessimism

Protective factors

1)      Social support

2)      Coping skills

3)      Optimism

Protective Factors

Social Support:

  • Blunts impact of stress, products greater sense of identity & meaning; may prevent maladaptive way of coping (e.g drinking)
  • Enhances Immune System
  • Shown among cancer patients
  • People who talk about negative life events

Coping Self-Efficacy

  • Belief that we can successfully cope
  • Increased efficacy from: previous success, observing other, social persuasion/ encouragement, low levels of arousal
  • Shown to increase immune system functioning (YOU HAVE THE POWER!!)
READ:
Life History: Diversity, Reproduction, K vs. R species, Tradeoffs

Optimism

  • View/ belief in the outcome
  • Things will workout
  • Realistic thinking or delusion?
  • Either way optimists have
  • Appraisal of being less helpless
  • Better adjustment to negative life events
  • Sense of less haplessness
  • Better health

Personality factors

TYPE A

  • Demanding of themselves and others
  • Competitive and ambitious
  • Aggressive and Hostile (OVER REACTIVE)
  • Double the risk of heart disease; more likely to alienate others

TYPE B

  • Relaxed and agreeable
  • Less time urgency

TYPE C

  • Highly sociable
  • Mirror image of A
  • Bottle up emotions
  • Feel helpless in severe stress
  • More at risk for cancer

TYPE D

  • Negative perspective on life
  • 3 times more likely to have heart disease

Physiological Toughness

Pattern A: Common response

Pattern B: Physiologically tough individuals

  • Low resting level of cortisol; low secretion levels & quick return to baseline
  • Quick, strong catecholamine response & quick decline
  • B Low resting levels plus Catecholamine burst prevents hormone depletion & exhaustion

Stress & Working Memory

Stress & Frontal Cortex

  • Overproduction of PKC, Protein Kinase C
  • Impairs working memory
  • Implicated in ADHD
  • I.e sitting in examination hall, you’ve studied but, don’t understand #1, can’t remember steps to solve question #2! WHAT HAPPENED?

Cortisol & Memory

  • Compared effect of oral cortisol & placebo
  • Asked to memorize 60 nouns presented on a screen
  • Tested for free recall, recognition and delayed 24 recall
  • Found that the cortisol group did worse in tests of recall than control (no differences in ability to recognize words)

Coping with Stress

Problem-focused (men)

  • Deal directly with demands of situation…try & change situation

Emotion-Focused

  • Dealing with ‘responses’ to situation

Seeking Social Support (Women)

  • Turning to others for emotional support, assistance

Controllability & coping

Hostage Situation

  • You cannot always change the situation
  • With little control over the situation which is best?
  • Fewer maladaptive behaviors with emotion-focused (no strategy works for all situations)

Health Promotion

Health Psychology

  • Study of psychological & behavioral factors in: prevention & treatment of illness…promotion of health
  • Why is this important? Leading causes of death are now influenced by behavioral factors
  • Health Impairing Behaviors: Smoking, Fatty Diets, Sedentary lifestyle, Binge drinking
  • Health Enhancing Behavior: Eating healthy, Exercise, Weight control, Self-reinforcements

How to make changes: Transtheoretical Model

6 MAJOR stages in behavioural change process

  • Precontemplation
    • No desire to change
    • Deny behavior has negative consequence
    • Feel helpless to change
    • Contemplation
      • Percieve problem or desire for behavioral change
      • Perceived benefits outweigh costs
      • Preparation
        • Developing plan of action
        • Identification of conditions that affect behavior
        • Action
          • Actively modify behavior or environment (require greatest commitment)
          • Maintenance
            • Behaivour change is being maintained
            • Termination
              • Change in behavior is ingrained

Treatment & Prevention Changing Behaviour

  • Lapse: “one-time” slip
  • Relapse: Return to undesirable behavior
  • Relapse Rate: 30% of treated alcoholics after one year remain improved (70% relapse)
  • 20% abstinence for smoking (80% relapse within a year)
  • Self-initiated changes (40%-45% maintain them for 4 months)

What causes relapse?

  • Insufficient coping skills
  • Lack of self-efficacy
  • Expected positive benefits from substance
  • High risk situation

Abstinence violation effect: self-blame & guilt reinforce sense of helplessness

Can include:

  • Biological Measure: e.g Nicotine patches
  • Aversion Therapy: Noxious taste on cigerettes
  • Stress Management: relaxation techniques
  • Coping/ Social Skills: how to diffuse a stressful social situation
  • Counselling: Support systems
  • Positive Reinforcement: reward yourself
READ:
Life History: Diversity, Reproduction, K vs. R species, Tradeoffs

Harm Reduction Approaches

Harm Reduction: Goal is not to eliminate behaviour to reduce harmful effects (e.g reduction of binge drinking, needle exchange programs)

What is Binge Drinking?

  • Blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 gram-percent or above in about 2 hours
  • Corresponds to consuming: MALE 5 or more drinks FEMALE 4 more drinks
  • Binge Drinking leads to: Death, injury, assault, sexual abuse, unsafe sex, academic problems, health problems, suicide, drunk driving

SBIRT: Screening Brief Interventions, Referral to Treatment

  • Screened for at-risk behaviours
  • Offered progressive levels of intervention
  • Brief intervention, brief treatment, referral to specialty treatment

PAIN

  • Pain: sensory & emotional component
  • Biological mechanism of pain: nerve endings in skin & internal organs, which are sent through the spinal cord to the thalamus-> somatosensory cortex and limbic cortex

Gate control theory of pain

  • Opening and closing of gating mechanisms
  • Pain depends on amount of gate opening
  • 2 types of fibres…thick and thin
  • Thin: sharp pain impulses
  • Thick: dull-pain & touch
  • Greater thick fibre activity closes gates…ration of thick:thin

Pain

  • Also have control mechanism: messages from brain influences experience of pain
  • Endorphins: natural opiates- modify action of neurons
  • Inhibit the release of neutrotansmitters involed in pain transmission
  • Up to 200x more potent than morphine

Stress induced analgesia

  • Reduction/ absence of pain under stress
  • Adaptive response of threatening situation

Cultural & Psychological Factors

Meanings & Beliefs

  • Self-perception matters!
  • Appraisal of pain influences pain response (soldiers vs. civilians)
  • Placebos beliefs in taking something affects response (brain releases endorphins)

Personality and social support

  • Neuroticism: greater pain reposes
  • Optimism & control: lower pain responses, less suffering
  • *Once you learn to accept the pain, they experience less pain
  • Social support: recent loss of social support= greater pain & distress

Control Pain…Cognitively

  • Dissociation strategy: distraction from painful input…directing attention elsewhere, effective for less painful situations
  • Association strategy: focus on pain sensations, not label as painful…effective with intense pain
  • Combined strategies better than placebos

Information Control: KNOWING WHAT TO EXPECT

  • Sensory info: what you will feel, pain seen as normal consequence
  • Procedural info: information about surgical procedure…gives sense of predictability
  • Coping guidance: techniques to handle pain or complications
  • Inactivity & overprotection- can lead to chronic pain…modify pain signals damage..decrease in disability

Happiness (Hyperthymina): cheerful despite life’s misfortunes, energetic and productive, they are often the envy of all who know them because they don’t even have to work at it.

author avatar
William Anderson (Schoolworkhelper Editorial Team)
William completed his Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts in 2013. He current serves as a lecturer, tutor and freelance writer. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, walking his dog and parasailing. Article last reviewed: 2022 | St. Rosemary Institution © 2010-2024 | Creative Commons 4.0

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