Stress Flashcards
Sources, physiology, causes, measures and management
GAS model: who, what?
Seyle:
Alarm: stress occurs, homeostasis is breached, resistance: body fights against stress,
exhuastion: body grows weary and stress responses take over, leading to a deterioration in functioning
Name all causes of stress & the person
Work (Chandola et. al.) Live events (Holmes and Rahe) Personality (Friedman and Rosenman)
Whitehall II study, procedure
Done by Chandola et al.
Longitudinal. Started in 1985, expected to finish in 2030
Cohorts aged 35-55
Around 10308 participants
Questionnairs included job strain self reports
Recorded number of heart attacks, blood pressure, cholesterol, waist circumference, sugar levels, etc.
Whitehall II study, findings
People with high job strain (little personal control over situations with high job demand) and social isolation at work had most stress.
Association between work stress and CHD.
Especially evident in people below 50.
Work strain was related to poor physical activity and high cortisol, which account for 32% of its effects
Original Life Events study (causes of stress)`
Holmes and Rahe
around 394 participants through case histories and interviews of people who had suffered extreme stress
listed 43 stressful life events, most stressful being death of a spouse (100 points), divorce, marital separation, jail term
Personality as a cause of stress
Friedman and Rosenman: Type A and Type B personalities
Longitudinal study using 3,000 MEN (divided roughly equally according to type) from 39-59 with anine year follow up.
70% of deaths occured in the type A group.
Type As are likely to suffer from greater stress and CHDs.
Explain Type A vs B
Type A: competitive, uptight, time-conscious, perfectionist
Type B: carefree, easy-going, not time conscious
List Measures of Stress
Physical: fMRI, sample saliva / personal space intrusion
Psychological: self-reports based on life events OR personality tests
Describe fMRI as a measure of stress
Wang et al. “areterial spin-labelling profusion technique”
32 participants, 25 in stress.
high stress task (arithmetic, prompted for faster responses)
low stress task: count backwards from 1000.
found that the ventral rightprefrontal cortext was activated in stressful situtaions
Salivary cortisol
It’s used to measure the stress because cortisol is released by the adrenal glands in response to stress.
Evans and Wener: 139 commuters, 59% male
Car density and seat density, seat density caused problems, concluded that seat density is a problem which causes stress and underlies the experience of “crowding”
- also proof that salivary cortisol is a measure of stress
Life events (as a MEASURE of stress)
Rank which life events occurred past 12 or 24 months, each has a point
above 300 is severe chance for illness
150+ is moderate
below 150 slight chance for illness
Rahe tested on 2500 military men in the USA to check for a correlation between their points and number of checkups and found a correlation between stress and illness at the same positive measure of 0.118
Why personality as a stress measure is complicated?
Bc we don’t know what aspect of a type-A personality is bad. (Hostility, time-awareness, etc)
Name two drugs for stress
Prozac, Benzodiazepine.
Kahn looked into Benzo with a 250 participant placebo trial and found that it works!!
Name psychological management techniques for stress
Biofeedback
Imagery
Stress Prevention
Biofeedback
Electrodes which sense muscle tension and give feeback (in the form of noises) to help notify when to relax your muscles.
Budzynski: 15 participants in experimental (feedback) group and also in two control groups (silent, told to constantly relax AND “low tone” told the tone would help them relax). Feedback group did better
