Discuss prevalence rates of one or more health problems Flashcards
Prevalence rates
The frequency of a health problem within a given population.
Issue with prevalence and stress
With stress it is difficult to determine the prevalence rate as there are different ways to measure, causes of it, and different ways it can manifest itself.
Usually, what are two ways to report prevalence?
Point prevalence reports the proportion of a population that has a health problem at a specific point in time.
Lifetime prevalence, on the other hand, is the proportion of a population that at some point in their life has ever had the problem.
With stress, what are the variations in reports of stressful experiences influenced by?
Variations in reports of stressful experiences across countries might be influenced by cultural or local interpretations of what defines stress.
By differences in how life experiences are integrated into personal judgments.
According to research stress can be triggered by what?
Stress can be an environmental trigger, the result of a cognitive appraisal or a biological response.
Given this wide definition of stress what is important to consider?
These differences when interpreting data about the prevalence of stress between cultures.
This essay will therefore discuss the different possible prevalences related to stress.
What is the first possible difference in prevalence rate?
Might be due to location in terms of countries.
This can be due to culture and norms of the specific country which can cause high levels of stress.
Stats on EU and location differences
On average 22% of europeans experience stress at work but this differers between countries.
For example, in Greece, 55% of workers reported stress compared to only 12% in the UK. This high difference therefore shows that location can have a significant impact on stress.
Why is the EU a good example?
The EU is a good comparison as it can reduce the extraneous variable of working laws as EU countries share similar rules to each other.
What study investigates location?
Faresjö et al.
What did Faresjo et al. investigate?
Investigated whether stress levels measured by cortisol concentrations in hair were different between comparable Greek and Swedish young adults.
Procedure of Faresjo
The researchers conducted a cross-sectional study among young adults from Greece and Sweden.
All participants were required to answer a questionnaire and give hair samples.
The questionnaire included questions on drug use, medications, serious life events, health status, and hope for the future.
Results of Faresjo
The Greek sample reported significantly more experiences of serious life events, higher perceived stress, higher scores on the depression and anxiety scales, lower scores for hope for the future, and more daily smoking.
Regular medication was significantly more frequent among the Swedes, and no differences between the Greeks and Swedes were found concerning self-reported health.
After adjustments for differences in sex and age distribution, it was found that Greek cortisol levels were significantly lower than comparable Swedish levels.
Conclusion of Faresjo
From this we can conclude that young Greek adults had significantly lower cortisol levels than comparable Swedish young adults, despite the fact that the Greeks reported higher perceived stress, reported more experience of serious life events, had lower hope for the future and had widespread symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Therefore, there is clearly a strong relationship between a number of social stressors in Greece and higher perceived levels of stress and therefore supports that location can have a significant impact on the prevalence rate of stress.
Evaluation of Faresjo
An issue with the study is that the sample was not representative of the overall population of either country, as it was only college-aged students from a single university within that country, and the number of males in the Greek sample was disproportionately lower than in the Swedish sample therefore making the results not reliable on whether location was the actual cause or not.
Also, drawing conclusions from the results is limited by the correlational nature of the data.
There are a number of other possible explanations for lower levels of cortisol in the Greek participants, including a warmer climate that could quicken hair growth and dilute cortisol concentrations, and differences in levels of sunlight that could possibly affect cortisol levels by leaching.
Neither of these alternative explanations has been confirmed in any prior research.
