Chapter 15 - Stress, Coping, And Health Flashcards
What are stressors and how are they related to stress?
Stress is the psychological reaction to stressors. Physiological components, psychological components, and stressors supply the necessary stimuli.
What is the Holmes-Rahe Readjusment Rating Scale?
The scale assigns a value called “life change units” that determine the “points” accounting towards your stress tolerance. The higher value you have at a given moment, the more likely you are to have a stressful episode. Much of stress is conceptualized as change.
What is primary and secondary appraisal?
How you evaluate your ability to deal with a stressor.
Primary appraisal represents how you evaluate the stress (is it a threat or not).
Secondary appraisal represents how you evaluate your own ability to deal with a stressor.
What is general adaptation syndrome and how does it look charted?
Known as GAS, it is a pattern of response in reaction to stressful response. It is measured on the sympathetic nervous system adaptation (hormone levels). It is a movement of the alarm reaction, resistance, then exhaustion. Alarm spikes the stress response, resistance is how long the state is prolonged for, and exhaustion is the rapid decline of stress response hormones.
What response is the sympathetic nervous system responsible for?
Fight or flight!
What are cortisol and epinephrine?
Cortisol is the main stress hormone, and epinephrine is the adrenaline hormone.
What is PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)?
A well-known long-lasting trauma response often derived from major traumas such as war, sexual assault, or injury. Constant stress is a symptom, and the trauma is reoccurring even through similar stimuli (reliving).
What are vulnerability and protective factors?
Vulnerability factors increase the chances of one’s stress response, protective factors will decrease the chances.
What is social support?
Social support is the main type protective factor, which describes therapy and counselling. Social support is beneficial even to those who are not prone to mental illness.
What is hardiness and what are its three values?
A concept of protective factor that is described by three values.
1. Commitment
A commitment to hard work, to try hard and to not be complacent.
2. Control
Locus of control, to focus on the things that you can control. Not to make excuses for things that you can’t control.
3. Challenge
Teaching oneself to be excited by potentially stressful events, to treat them as opportunities to rise to the occasion.
What is coping self-efficacy?
The value based belief that you are able to deal with challenges.
What is optimism?
A mindset to have hopefulness and confidence in the future, more of a lasting outlook rather than a brief feeling.
What is a type A personality?
Describes the personality of those who tend to be in constant work-mode. However, they may be more irritable or anxious. They tend to be competitive.
What is a type B personality?
Describes the personality of those who tend to be more laid back and relaxed, those who take things slow. However, they tend to be lazier types of people.
What is finding meaning as a stress protective factor?
It is a protective factor that helps you process the happenings of a stressful event, and it helps provide meaningful insight and clarity in some cases.
What is problem focused coping?
Trying to get rid of the stressor. It can be done through replacement if it is a manipulatable variable, or confrontation if it is another person. To get rid of the problem at the source.
What is emotion focused coping?
Dealing with the emotion that results from the stressor, not the stressor itself. To re-interpret the source of stress, to target your own emotional response to the problem as a type of regulation.
What are sex differences in coping methods?
Men are more likely to focus on problem focused coping while women are more likely to focus on both emotional focused coping and social support.
What is the transtheoretical model of change?
- Precontemplation
- Contemplation
- Preparation
- Action
- Maintenance
- Termination
What is motivational interviewing?
A non-confrontational method of getting people to change their own behaviour. Not through straight confrontation, but you get them to conclude to change on their own by asking the right questions.
What are multimodal treatments to changing habits?
- Aversion therapy
- Mindfulness meditation
- Self monitoring
- Coping
- Marital/family counselling
- Positive reinforcement
What is the difference between lapse and relapse? How does the abstinence violation effect help a lapse transition to a relapse?
A lapse is a short-lived fallback into a stopped habit. A relapse is a committed dedicative fallback into that habit, often prolonging over long stretches of time.
E.g. if an alcoholic indulged in a few drinks one night, that is a lapse. If they started drinking regularly again, that is a relapse.
Lapses often change into relapses via the abstinence violation effect, a form of guilt that may pressure the individual to continue that habit more (often with substances or alcohol).
What is hedonic well-being?
A concept of happiness that relates to an objectively good feeling or positive emotion. Any good-feeling mental state.
What is eudaemonic well-being?
A concept of how well your life is going, or a concept of happiness that is far more long term and consistent over the stretch of time.
What are 12 of the findings from positive psychology that predict happiness?
- Having quality close relationships
- Physical exercise
- Getting enough sleep
- Money (up until 75k)
- A short commute
- Paying for experiences than new things
- Religion (average is lower for religious societies)
- Having children (hedonic lower, eudaemonic higher)
- Pursuing goals
- Genetics
- Age
- Adjustment to life events (hedonic treadmill)
