Lecture 8 Flashcards
What is stress?
Taken from the idea of physics - Hans Selye noticed that his patients were all under physical ‘stress’. Meaning people who came to see him and were complaining of illnesses were all coming to him with a mental toll as well
What are 3 approaches to understanding stress?
Engineering approach
Response based
Transactional approach
What is the engineering approach?
Anything in your environment that produces strain or pressure on you is referred to as stress
The more “demanding” your environment the more stress which assumes then that the less “demanding” your environment the less stress
Demands could be of your time, your energy, your emotions etc.
How can the engineering approach be problematic?
This approach could be problematic because it does not consider your perception of demand, not all demands are stressful. In this approach, it assumes that everyone will have the same level of stress to the same demands.
Ex. If 5 students have 5 exams they should all feel the same stress, however this is not the case, some people respond to stress differently, some are better prepared for exams reducing their stress level
What is the response based approach?
Believes you are stressed only if you have a physiological reaction.
Assumes that stress has only occurred if you respond to it
What is problematic about the response based approach?
This approach is problematic because people have different reactions to stress. Some people do not react at all to stress.
Also some people are really good at masking or not understanding why they are changing(ex. Randomly crying and not knowing why)
What is the transactional approach?
considers stress as the outcome of the person interacting with the environment
Includes stress appraisal by the person, so the same stress causes different appraisals
Less “narrow” view of stress and considers interactions
considers stress as the outcome of the person interacting with the environment
What does the transactional approach consider?
The individual
Their reaction to the environment
The environment
Outcome of the person and the environment interacting
What is the least prescriptive approach?
The transactional approach
What is the general adaptation system?
Alarm: The initial response to stress “fight or flight”
body does whatever it needs to do to respond to the stress
Resistance: With prolonged stress, you would adapt
possible that stress continues and you have to adapt to the stress.
Ex. Responding to the stress of having divorced parents. You are still upset over it but your body decided it can’t do anything about it so it has to accept
Exhaustion: When you cannot overcome threat, and physiological resources deplete
stress is prolonged when it is intense enough and you can’t handle any more of it
this is where chronic illness is most likely to develop
What is stress associated with?
Stress is associated with chronic illness because if it is not addressed it will lead to depletion of mental and physical resources.
How do you move through the stages of the general adaptation syndrome?
You don’t have to go through each stage sometimes you handle the stress in the alarm stage and you don’t have to adapt to it because it is no longer there
When do you encounter allostasis?
Stress theory and physiology suggests when you encounter stress you experience allostasis, and when the stress goes away the allostasis ends
What is allostasis
Allostasis is our adaptive mechanism physiologically and behaviourally to cope with stress
• physiological coping as well as behaviour to cope stress
How is allostasis used in your body?
Allostasis in the brain to release cortisol – energy for stress
the brain goes through a hormonal releasing pathway, releasing cortisol, a stress hormone whose job is to give you energy to deal with stress. If you remain stressed for a long time and cortisol is in your system for too long it could lead to metabolic illness.
