Stress, illness and coping Flashcards
Does Stress affect health?
- Stress leads to seeking medical treatment,
- 60% of medical consultations are related to stress,
- Stress causes ill health and reduces quality of life,
- Stress often leads to a loss of working days,
Stress and health- key facts
- Stress is the most common work related illness,
- In 2018-19, 602,000 workers reported suffering from work- related stress,
- Women report 33% higher rates of stress than men.
- Health professionals, public admin, defence and teachers have the highest prevalence of self reported work stress.
Stress, depression and anxiety by cause in %
44%=workload, 21%=Other, 14%=Lack of support, 13%=Violence, threats or bullying, 8%=Changes at work
What are stressors
Stressors are threats, challenges or demands. They can be real or imaginary
What are stress responses?
- They can be Behavioural, emotional, cognitive or physiological
- Stress responses are Acute responses.
Stressors- what are some examples of the wide ranges of factors that can cause stress?
- External traumatic events,
- Internal conflicts,
- Life events,
- Unpredictable threats we feel we have no control over,
- Everyday events/daily hassles,
- Environmental
What are some social evaluative stressors
- Threats to social status,
- Social esteem and worth,
- Acceptance within a group or community.
What are the psychobiological factors which influence stress responses
- Biomedical=Hunger, tiredness, illness, pain
- Psychological=Personality, self-esteem, self-confidence
- Social=Gender, education, socio-economic group
What factors increase stress
- Stressors are increased when they are deemed:
- Uncontrollable,
- Unpredictable,
- Novel
Define Stress
- Stress is a physical and emotional response to any situation that may be perceived as threatening or exceeding the persons ability to cope with it,
- Stress depends on specific psychobiological determinants that trigger a stress response in each individual
What is the problem with defining stress?
- Some things are stressful to most people but the degree of stress can vary widely,
- One persons stress is another’s excitement.
What are the 3 main models of stress?
1) General Adaptation Syndrome =Stress is viewed as a response- the ways we react to stressful stimuli. (A response)
2) Life events model= Stress viewed as something we encounter in our environment, something that happens to us, (A stimulus)
3) Transactional model=Stress viewed as series of continuous interactions between an individual and the environment. (A process)
What are the main points of the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
- Stress is a ‘non-specific response of the body to any demand’,
- All organisms display a series of automatic, non-specific, universal, physiological responses to stressors.
3 Stages of response:
- Alarm reaction,
- Resistance,
- Exhaustion
What are the main limitations of the General Adaptation syndrome (GAS)
- Assumes an automatic response to an external stressor,
- All stressors do not produce the same responses,
- Individual Variability- No consideration to the influence of individual psychosocial factors
What gender is more likely to show tend and befriend responses?
-Females
