...Stress and Health Psychology Andrew Arnold March 25, 2010 Ever wonder about how stress affects our bodies and our health? This word stress is thrown around by the media so much it’s losing its meaning but have you ever wondered how they define stress? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines stress as a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation. Our text book defines stress as the term used to describe the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging. Stress-causing events are called stressors, they can come from external sources or from within us and can scale from relatively mild to quite serious. There are things, events, and conflicts that cause people to “stress-out.” These are called stressors. Stressors can be anything from something small, like being stuck in traffic during rush hour or something big like an earthquake or hurricane. Stressors can also be imaginary, such as financial stress such as, where the next mortgage payment will come from. There are two kinds of stressors, one is distress which is the bad stress and eustress which is the good stress that motivates us as people to do well. There are certain environmental factors that can affect our stress levels and sometimes we cannot control the outcome of these events, these are basic ups and downs of life. An example of an external stressor is...
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...Psychology Stress And Health Stress and Health Psychology Andrew Arnold March 25, 2010 Ever wonder about how stress affects our bodies and our health? This word stress is thrown around by the media so much it’s losing its meaning but have you ever wondered how they define stress? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines stress as a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation. Our text book defines stress as the term used to describe the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging. Stress-causing events are called stressors, they can come from external sources or from within us and can scale from relatively mild to quite serious. There are things, events, and conflicts that cause people to “stress-out.” These are called stressors. Stressors can be anything from something small, like being stuck in traffic during rush hour or something big like an earthquake or hurricane. Stressors can also be imaginary, such as financial stress such as, where the next mortgage payment will come from. There are two kinds of stressors, one is distress which is the bad stress and eustress which is the good stress that motivates us as people to do well. There are certain environmental factors that can affect our stress levels and sometimes we cannot control the outcome of these events, these are basic ups and downs of life. An example...
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...October 20, 2012 SOPHIE’S CHOICE A movie review by The title of the film that I watched was Sophie’s Choice. I felt that the name of the movie was as such because she had several choices that she had to make throughout this film; the choice between her two children, between Nathan and Stingo, and the choice to live or die. The main characters in this film were Sophie Zowistowski (Meryl Streep), Nathan (Kevin Kline), and Stingo (Peter MacNicol). The basic plot of the film: Sophie Zawistowski was the survivor of the Nazi Concentration Camps. Sophie’s father was one of the anti-Jew voices in that day. Due to a mistake by Sophie her father became upset with her and dis owned her. She ended up with a Jew and ended up being sent to the concentration camp along with her two children. Here the Nazis forced her to choose which of her two children would be executed. She found a reason to continue living through her boyfriend Nathan. Nathan was a Jew who “saved” Sophie after her return from Auschwitz and was obsessed with the Holocaust. Sophie seems haunted by her past choices; Nathan is plagued by his own demons, Nathan wrestles with alcohol abuse and Schizophrenic mood swings that sometimes created a violent personality. Stingo arrives in Brooklyn to jump start his writing career. He rents a ground floor where his up stair neighbors are Nathan and Sophie. Stingo ends up trapped between them and falls in love with Sophie. In the end Nathan recognizes that he can only...
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...November 2015 The Effects That Stress Has On Health Stress is a word that constantly gets tossed around with different meanings and connotations. Many people do not realize what a significant effect that it can have on people and their families. Merriam-Webster defines stress as a state of mental tension and worry caused by problems in your life, work, etc. The denotation of stress can also be stated as something that causes strong feelings of worry or anxiety. In a medical or biological context, stress is a physical, mental, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension (medicinenet.com). It does not just interfere with your daily life; it causes many health problems. Stress can be as acute or as minute as the patient allows it to be but despite the assumptions, stress is a terrible disease that can affect the health of many including altered brain function, internal organ issues, and mental instability. There are many different causes of stress depending on the type of person the patient may be. Money, the economy, work, relationships, and responsibilities are all recorded factors known to cause stress. Stress can be caused by a deadline you have to meet at work or even the concern of pleasing your spouses or relatives. Workplace stress can affect your ability to apply and keep jobs or appease your boss. According to a survey from the American Psychological Association, more than one third of American workers experience chronic work stress (helpguide.org). School can...
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...Stress is something that everyone in the world goes through at some point in life. When looking at the definition on stress it states that stress is the mental and physical response and adaptation to ones bodies to the real or perceived changes and challenges in one’s life. Stress also affects our emotions and how we feel about certain situations. One’s health can majorly be affected by stress. When looking how stress can affect one’s health it has some positive and negative effects. The positive of how stress can affect our health is that it can drive us to want to do better at the task that we have at hand. Stress can be seen as a cognitive enhancer. One way that stress can be a cognitive enhancer is that it can help one focus. One such...
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...How Stress Affects Health Isn’t it amazing how stress affects so many aspects of our lives? Stress can change our routine in the way we live daily. Personalities can be changed due to stress, a person may be under so much stress it causes them to become angry or depressed. Throughout this paper I will relate the effects stress has on our health. Stress influences our physical and mental health in more ways than we can imagine. There are two types of stressors. One causes distress where maybe you’re late for something and you get caught in traffic behind a slow driver. The second one is eustress which is triggered by positive moments like the first kiss or being acknowledged at work for a fine job done. Those are just some aspects of how stress is relative to health. As I previously mentioned there are two types of stressors that have totally opposite effects, one positive the other negative. Well if there are positive and negative stressors what would that do to our mood? Even though a psychological disorder is an entirely different subject, stress can change so many things about a person. Let’s say a student has so much going on at work and school. If this student can’t handle the school and work load it may cause depression. There can also be stress from bullying that causes a person to pick up an eating habit thus making their health deteriorate. Finally learning to cope with stress from daily events can be a task that may involve discipline. Coping strategies are actions...
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...How Stress Affects Our Health November 25, 2015 How Stress Affects Our Health In life there is not one human being who has not felt the anxiety or heart pounding feeling of being stressed. I believe this is a silent disease that slowly takes over one’s life one way or another. According to Kiev (1974), from a medical standpoint stress is just a nervous tension because life is being lived too quickly; therefore, the energy is being wasted. Stress can wear an individual out and cause heath issues once entering adulthood. Feeling stressed is so common in everyday life that it has become a way of life. When individuals are under stress they tend to panic, not realizing the toll it is taking on their body and mind. Stress starts to affect the body by prolonging the levels of fat, causing the immune system to diminish and leaving the body weak and vulnerable to infections (Reinhold, 1996). There are several types of stresses that can affect you and cause cognitive issues, emotional issues, mental issues, and physical issues. A type of stress that many come across several times in their life is short-term stress. Probably the most common type of stress that there is. This type of stress that last for a small amount of time, hens the name short-term stress. An example of short-term stress is when there is a deadline on an assignment in school or work. It is something that once you have completed and turned in on the deadline all stress is completely gone. Chronic life stress...
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...person manages stress can have a big impact on the body’s physical and psychological well being. Stress can effect one’s body in a bad way or in a good way; some of the reasons for stress are to keep the bodies brain thinking about the right things. If it weren’t for stress the body would just keep moving forward without the worries of what needs to be done. Stress is healthy to a certain extent and it has to be managed on a healthy level. Bad stress can affect the body in a negative way; it can actually cause health problems if not dealt with in the proper manner. Stress is one of the most important health and social problems. Previous studies have demonstrated stress influence on the clinical course of a number of gastrointestinal diseases, but its physical and psychological effects on gastric acid and pepsin secretions are largely unknown. There were 48 male winstar rats divided up into six groups; and in the study, electrical shock generated in a communication box was used as physical shock and the emotional stress was as psychological stress. Gastric juice was collected by washout technique. Acid output was also measured by digital testator. Gastric pepsin and nitric oxide (NO) metabolites were quantified using Anson and Griess micro assay methods respectively. Basal and stimulated gastric acid and pepsin in physical and psychological stress groups were significantly more than others. NO metabolites level of gastric tissue in physical and psychological stress groups (286.9...
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...Mental Health and Stress Levels And How Might These Skills Relate to Academic and Personal Success Billy J. Houston GEN 200 01/11/2014 FRANCIS JONES It is important to manage our physical and mental health and stress levels because physical health is directly related to mental health and both of which can be affected by high stress levels causing both physical and mental illnesses to develop. The physical health of a person can affect a person's mental abilities resulting in higher stress level. The bottom line is that stress can kill, as I have learned to be true in my own life experiences, as my father passed away from a massive heart attack at the age of 46 years old. How his physical life contributed to his development of stress related maladies is clear as my father was an alcoholic, a smoker, and also a diabetic who never took his conditions or his medications very seriously until it was too late and he was taken from us. He did manage to participate in several activities which reduced his stress somewhat such as fishing, bowling, and playing baseball with his children, but because he had the contributing factors already in place, due to hereditary traits for diabetes and heart disease it would have been much better for him if he did not drink or smoke. As a result of his early death none of his six children drink at all and only one of them smokes and is in the process of quitting. Another reason it is important to manage our physical and mental health and stress...
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...Research that has suggested a link between stress and ill health. Looking at the link between stress and illness, there have been many studies done to show the direct effect stress has in relation to illness, the main three pathways looked at are the direct effect, stress interacting with pre-existing vulnerabilities and how stress leads to behavioural changes that are not beneficial to one’s health. However it is hard for researchers to establish a definite cause and effect relationship between stress and specific physical symptoms or illnesses. Not only do people's minds and bodies react differently to stress, but there also are other factors at work when someone falls ill. Most researchers have found the more a person suffers from stress the weaker his or hers immune system becomes. In trying to understand why stress can be bad for the body is to look at it from an evolutionary perspective, where in the past our ancestors were often confronted with life threatening situations and as a result the ‘fight or flight’ response evolved. Whilst being confronted by dangerous situations such as confrontation with a predator it was necessary to send blood to the muscles and be in a heightened state of arousal, however today it might not be relevant to most everyday stressors. So we can say most stressors do not pose a physical danger to us yet the way our nervous and endocrine systems have evolved we react to the stressors as if they did, whilst it might have been an adaptive response...
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...Stress is defined as a state of physical and psychological fatigue of the individual, caused by an excess of work, emotional disorders or anxiety. Even though in some occasions, stress could be considered as the motor in people’s lives, it is, before anything else, one of the human being’s fiercest enemies. In the face of stress, the human organism reacts in the biological aspect as well as in the psychological aspect. This disorder is better known nowadays as the “Sickness of the twenty-first century” given that it seems to be the price to pay tin order to achieve goals these days. Stress is most common in students and workers nowadays, which is why the following essay will expose some of the consequences of underestimating the seriousness of stress in an individual, in a work place and in a society of the twenty-first century and some ways to manage and prevent it. Stress is manifested nowadays more frequently that one would imagine. People should start to think how frequently do they and people around them use the phrases “I am so stressed out” or “I’ve been feeling so stressed lately”. The answer would most likely be “too frequent”. Actually, stress seems to be infiltrating in each and every person’s life. The time that people spend stressing over an assignment, especially students, is inhumane. There is nothing wrong with taking two minutes and eat something or relax. Otherwise, that’s where stress begins to kick in. Stress has begun to take away peoples lives. Even...
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...composition, ultrasounds of brachial and carotid arteries, salivary cortisol samples and blood samples. The officers also wear a small electronic device to measure the quantity and quality of sleep throughout a typical police shift cycle. Results from Violanti's pilot studies have shown, among other findings, that officers over age 40 had a higher 10-year risk of a coronary event compared to average national standards; 72 percent of female officers and 43 percent of male officers, had higher-than-recommended cholesterol levels; and police officers as a group had higher-than-average pulse rates and diastolic blood pressure. The investigation's two most recent studies report on the effect of shift work on stress and suicide risk in police officers, and on male/female differences in stress and possible signs of cardiovascular disease. Results of the shift work pilot study, involving 115 randomly selected officers, showed that suicidal thoughts were higher in women working the day shift, and in men working the afternoon/night shifts. The findings appear online in the October issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. Data showed that 23 percent of male and 25 percent of female officers reported more suicidal thoughts than the general population (13.5 percent). In a previous study, suicide rates were three times higher in police than in other municipal workers, Violanti found. The findings, that in women officers working day shifts were more likely to be related to depression...
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...The example of stress I would like to give is care giver stress. Care Giver Stress Homeostasis – the tendancy of biological systems to maintain relatively constant conditions in the internal environment while continuously interacting with and adjusting to changes originating within or outside the system. (medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/homeostasis.) The composition of the internal environment is maintained within narrow limits, and this fairly constant state is called homeostasis. Literally, this term means 'unchanging', but in practice it describes a dynamic, ever-changing situation kept within narrow limits. When this balance is threatened or lost, there is a serious risk to the well-being of the individual. There are many factors in the internal environment which must be maintained within narrowlimits and some of these are listed in Box 1.1.Homeostasis is maintained by control systems which detect and respond to changes in the internal environment. A control system (Fig. 1.3) has three basic components: detector, control centre and effector. The control centre determines the limits within which the variablefactor should be maintained. It receives an input from thedetector or sensor, and integrates the incoming information. When the incoming signal indicatesthat an adjustment is needed the control centre responds and its outpu to the effector is changed. This is a dynamic process that maintains homeostasis. (Ross and Wilson) page 5Adrenaline and noradrenaline ...
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...What value do you see in managing your physical and mental health and stress levels? How might these skills relate to academic and personal success? Please elaborate on your response. When something is going on in my life- a paper due for school, an important meeting is coming up at work, I get nervous, I get anxious, and in plain terms, I freak out. I have always been a super high-stressed, high-anxiety person. There was one time, my freshman year of college, I was so nervous for a math exam I broke out in hives! One of the main things that I have learned over the years- from my amazing parents- is that all I have to do is step back from the situation, take a deep breath, and calm down. There is nothing more important than your physical and mental health. Is something is off with someone physically or mentally, there is no way to get anything done. It is of utmost importance to keep your body and mind healthy. For me, before I have a big meeting at work, I take off a bit early and do something for myself- whether its going to the spa and getting a massage or going to get my hair or nails done, I do something that gets my mind off of what I’m worrying about. This keeps my mental health in check, which ultimately keeps my physical being healthier. The way I have learned to keep myself calm and cope with my nervousness throughout the past 2 years has help me further my business by helping me believe in myself- when I’m not nervous and anxious I know that I have the clarity to...
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...PROTECTING WORKERS HEALTH SERIES NO 3 WORK ORGANISATION & STRESS SYSTEMATIC PROBLEM APPROACHES FOR EMPLOYERS, MANAGERS AND TRADE UNION REPRESENTATIVES Protecting Workers Health Series No. 3 Authors: Stavroula Leka BA MSc PhD Professor Amanda Griffiths CPsychol AFBPsS FRSH Professor Tom Cox CBE INSTITUTE OF WORK, HEALTH & ORGANISATIONS University of Nottingham Nottingham Science and Technology Park University Boulevard William Lee Buildings 8 Nottingham NG7 2RQ United Kingdom WHO Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Leka, Stavroula. Work organisation and stress : systematic problem approaches for employers, managers and trade union representatives / Stavroula Leka, Amanda Griffiths, Tom Cox. (Protecting workers health series ; no. 3) 1. Stress, Psychological prevention and control 2. Occupational Health 3.Occupational diseases prevention and control 4. Risk assessment. 5.Work psychology I.Griffiths, Amanda II.Cox, Tom III.Title IV.Series ISBN 92 4 159047 5 (NLM classification: WA 440) © World Health Organization 2003 All rights reserved. Publications of the World Health Organization can be obtained from Marketing and Dissemination, World Health Organization, 20 Avenue Appia, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland (tel: +41 22 791 2476; fax: +41 22 791 4857; email: bookorders@who.int). Requests for permission to reproduce or translate WHO publications whether for sale or for noncommercial distribution should be addressed to Publications, at the above...
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