Stress, illness and coping Flashcards
(25 cards)
Does Stress affect health?
- Stress leads to seeking medical treatment,
- 60% of medical consultations are related to stress,
- Stress causes ill health and reduces quality of life,
- Stress often leads to a loss of working days,
Stress and health- key facts
- Stress is the most common work related illness,
- In 2018-19, 602,000 workers reported suffering from work- related stress,
- Women report 33% higher rates of stress than men.
- Health professionals, public admin, defence and teachers have the highest prevalence of self reported work stress.
Stress, depression and anxiety by cause in %
44%=workload, 21%=Other, 14%=Lack of support, 13%=Violence, threats or bullying, 8%=Changes at work
What are stressors
Stressors are threats, challenges or demands. They can be real or imaginary
What are stress responses?
- They can be Behavioural, emotional, cognitive or physiological
- Stress responses are Acute responses.
Stressors- what are some examples of the wide ranges of factors that can cause stress?
- External traumatic events,
- Internal conflicts,
- Life events,
- Unpredictable threats we feel we have no control over,
- Everyday events/daily hassles,
- Environmental
What are some social evaluative stressors
- Threats to social status,
- Social esteem and worth,
- Acceptance within a group or community.
What are the psychobiological factors which influence stress responses
- Biomedical=Hunger, tiredness, illness, pain
- Psychological=Personality, self-esteem, self-confidence
- Social=Gender, education, socio-economic group
What factors increase stress
- Stressors are increased when they are deemed:
- Uncontrollable,
- Unpredictable,
- Novel
Define Stress
- Stress is a physical and emotional response to any situation that may be perceived as threatening or exceeding the persons ability to cope with it,
- Stress depends on specific psychobiological determinants that trigger a stress response in each individual
What is the problem with defining stress?
- Some things are stressful to most people but the degree of stress can vary widely,
- One persons stress is another’s excitement.
What are the 3 main models of stress?
1) General Adaptation Syndrome =Stress is viewed as a response- the ways we react to stressful stimuli. (A response)
2) Life events model= Stress viewed as something we encounter in our environment, something that happens to us, (A stimulus)
3) Transactional model=Stress viewed as series of continuous interactions between an individual and the environment. (A process)
What are the main points of the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
- Stress is a ‘non-specific response of the body to any demand’,
- All organisms display a series of automatic, non-specific, universal, physiological responses to stressors.
3 Stages of response:
- Alarm reaction,
- Resistance,
- Exhaustion
What are the main limitations of the General Adaptation syndrome (GAS)
- Assumes an automatic response to an external stressor,
- All stressors do not produce the same responses,
- Individual Variability- No consideration to the influence of individual psychosocial factors
What gender is more likely to show tend and befriend responses?
-Females
What are the main points of The Life Events model?
Stress as a stimulus
- Life events can have a big affect on health due to the amount of adjustment required,
- Stress relates to the amount of adjustment or number of life events or changes a person is faced with in a certain timeframe e.g. moving house or new job
What are the main limitations of the Life Events model?
- People react differently to similar events,
- Severity e.g. sudden death or expected? Do circumstance mediate stress?
- Restricted range- omissions and non-events not included. For example stress caused by not being able to become pregnant.
- Moderating variables (e.g social support, financial status) not included
What are the main points of the Transactional Model?
- Stress is viewed as a dynamic process/series of transactions between individual and environment,
- Appraise stressor- Primary and secondary appraisal,
- Adopt a coping strategy,
- Re-appraise stressor in the light of the coping strategy
What are the strengths of the Transactional Model?
- Cognitive approach- not limited to physiological approach,
- Takes psychological and emotional responses into account,
- Dynamic- we can evaluate and change coping strategies,
- Allows individuals to change their minds and find alternative strategies,
- Allows for circumstances and situations to change,
- Acknowledges individual differences
What are the main limitations of the Transactional model?
- Lack of empirical evidence,
- Variability and complexity of individual stress-subjective perception,
- Difficulty differentiating factors that determine stress-subjective,
- Pre-existing factors may influence appraisal,
- Primary and secondary appraisals may interact and overlap.
- Stress response may not depend on appraisal.
What is the definition of Coping?
-An attempt to manage perceived demands that cause stress.
What are the main coping styles and strategies?
- The main coping styles are Approach and Avoidant,
- The main coping strategies are Problem-focused and Emotion-focused
Key points about Problem(action focused) coping strategies
- Two main strategies are Behavioural e.g (Attempts at control, list pros and cons, time management etc)
- Cognitive e.g. (seek information, avoid information, positive reappraisal and Goal-setting etc)
What are the four main adaptive coping strategies?
- Reduce demands,
- Increase resources,
- Dampen the physiological stress response,
- Use psychological interventions
