Stress Illness & Moderators, Managing Stress

Question 1

According to Lazarus’ transactional model of stress and coping, when does stress occur?

Answer 1

When there is a mismatch between an individual’s perception of demands and resources in a particular situation

Question 2

What is coping?

Answer 2

Altering a stressor or how it is interpreted - anything a person does to reduce the impact of a stressor

Question 3

What are the 5 main coping tasks described by Cohen & Lazarus that contribute to successful adaptation of a stressor?

Answer 3

• Reducing harmful external conditions
• Tolerating/adjusting to negative events
• Maintaining a positive self-image
• Maintaining emotional equilibrium and decreasing emotional stress
• Maintaining a satisfactory relationship with the environment or others

Question 4

Why does coping need to be flexible to change to be effective?

Answer 4

Because it’s highly dependent on context

Question 5

In Lazarus’ model of coping, why is it hard to know which coping strategies will be effective in certain situations?

Answer 5

Because both problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies work together to create overall coping responses in any situation

Question 6

What do clusters of personality traits often provide?

Answer 6

Typologies

Question 7

What are some of the methods of association between personality variables and health/illness?

Answer 7

• Personality can be predictive of disease onset (psychosomatic tradition)
• Personality may change as a result of illness (somatopsychic link)
• Personality may promote unhealthy behaviours predictive of disease (indirect link)
• Personality may influence illness progression/outcome because it influences coping responses

Question 8

What personality traits are associated with Type A behaviour?

Answer 8

• Competitiveness
• Time-urgent behaviours
• Easily annoyed/aroused
• Impatience
• Achievement-oriented behaviour
• Exhibit a vigorous speech pattern

Question 9

What other personality features have been associated with health/illness?

Answer 9

• Hostility/anger
• Type C personality
• Type D personality
• Neuroticism
• Hardiness
• Optimism

Question 10

What are Type C & Type D personalities?

Answer 10

Type C: Cooperative, appeasing, compliant, passive, self-sacrificing

Type D: Avoid social contact, inhibit negative emotions

Question 11

What does locus of control refer to?

Answer 11

A trait-like expectation that personal actions will be effective in controlling/mastering the environment

Question 12

What are some of the other types of control, other than locus of control?

Answer 12

• Behavioural: Belief that a behaviour will reduce the negative impact of a stressor
• Cognitive: Belief that thought processes will reduce the negative impact of a stressor
• Decisional: Opportunity to choose between options
• Informational: Opportunity to find out about the stressor
• Retrospective: Attributions of cause/control over an event after it happens

Question 13

What are some of the findings about depression & anxiety in relation to health/illness?

Answer 13

• Depression may reduce likelihood of healthy behaviour
• Depression/anxiety may influence appraisals during stressful events
• Depression/anxiety may influence coping

Question 14

What is the association between social support and health/illness?

Answer 14

When social support is perceived as being available, it affects how individuals appraise and respond to events

Question 15

What are the 5 basic types of social support?

Answer 15

• Emotional
• Esteem
• Tangible/instrumental
• Informational
• Network

Question 16

What is the direct effect hypothesis of social support?

Answer 16

Social support is beneficial regardless of the amount of stress

Question 17

What is the buffering hypothesis of social support?

Answer 17

Social support protects the person against negative effects of high stress

Question 18

How can stress be reduced at different levels?

Answer 18

• Systemic: Organisations, society, reducing sources of stress
• Individual: Changing strategies to coping with stress

Question 19

What are the 7 main causes of stress and burnout in hospitals?

Answer 19

• Job
• Role
• Career development
• Relationships at work
• Organisational structures
• Family pressures
• Grieving

Question 20

What did Beck & Ellis consider stress to be the result of?

Answer 20

Misinterpretations of environmental events/cognitions that exaggerate the negative aspects & influence a person to lose focus on positive aspects

Question 21

What are the automatic thoughts leading to negative emotions identified by Beck?

Answer 21

• Catastrophic thinking
• Over-generalisations
• Arbitrary inference: Drawing a conclusion without evidence
• Selective abstraction: Focusing on a detail taken out of context

Question 22

What are some of the factors that can be changed to reduce individual stress?

Answer 22

• Environmental triggers
• Inappropriate behavioural, physiological, cognitive responses
• Identifying triggers
• Identifying & changing cognitive distortions
• High levels of muscle tension/arousal reduced through relaxation
• Stressed behaviours

Question 23

What are the 3 phases of problem-focused counselling to change stress triggers?

Answer 23

• Problem exploration/clarification: What are the triggers?
• Goal setting: What triggers do you want to change?
• Facilitating action: How do you change the triggers?

Question 24

What are the 3 phases of learning relaxation skills?

Answer 24

• Learning basic skills
• Monitoring tension in daily life
• Using relaxation at times of stress

Question 25

What are 2 cognitive interventions for changing cognitions?

Answer 25

• Self-instruction training: Interrupting flow of stress-provoking thoughts, replaces with coping thoughts
• Cognitive restructuring: Identifying/challenging the accuracy of stress-provoking thoughts

Question 26

What is the downward arrow technique?

Answer 26

Asking key questions to identify distortions in core beliefs when individuals express inappropriate thoughts or reactions to events e.g. losing job because didn’t get drunk at a party