Stress Illness & Moderators, Managing Stress Flashcards
According to Lazarus’ transactional model of stress and coping, when does stress occur?
When there is a mismatch between an individual’s perception of demands and resources in a particular situation
What is coping?
Altering a stressor or how it is interpreted - anything a person does to reduce the impact of a stressor
What are the 5 main coping tasks described by Cohen & Lazarus that contribute to successful adaptation of a stressor?
- Reducing harmful external conditions
- Tolerating/adjusting to negative events
- Maintaining a positive self-image
- Maintaining emotional equilibrium and decreasing emotional stress
- Maintaining a satisfactory relationship with the environment or others
Why does coping need to be flexible to change to be effective?
Because it’s highly dependent on context
In Lazarus’ model of coping, why is it hard to know which coping strategies will be effective in certain situations?
Because both problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies work together to create overall coping responses in any situation
What do clusters of personality traits often provide?
Typologies
What are some of the methods of association between personality variables and health/illness?
- Personality can be predictive of disease onset (psychosomatic tradition)
- Personality may change as a result of illness (somatopsychic link)
- Personality may promote unhealthy behaviours predictive of disease (indirect link)
- Personality may influence illness progression/outcome because it influences coping responses
What personality traits are associated with Type A behaviour?
- Competitiveness
- Time-urgent behaviours
- Easily annoyed/aroused
- Impatience
- Achievement-oriented behaviour
- Exhibit a vigorous speech pattern
What other personality features have been associated with health/illness?
- Hostility/anger
- Type C personality
- Type D personality
- Neuroticism
- Hardiness
- Optimism
What are Type C & Type D personalities?
Type C: Cooperative, appeasing, compliant, passive, self-sacrificing
Type D: Avoid social contact, inhibit negative emotions
What does locus of control refer to?
A trait-like expectation that personal actions will be effective in controlling/mastering the environment
What are some of the other types of control, other than locus of control?
- Behavioural: Belief that a behaviour will reduce the negative impact of a stressor
- Cognitive: Belief that thought processes will reduce the negative impact of a stressor
- Decisional: Opportunity to choose between options
- Informational: Opportunity to find out about the stressor
- Retrospective: Attributions of cause/control over an event after it happens
What are some of the findings about depression & anxiety in relation to health/illness?
- Depression may reduce likelihood of healthy behaviour
- Depression/anxiety may influence appraisals during stressful events
- Depression/anxiety may influence coping
What is the association between social support and health/illness?
When social support is perceived as being available, it affects how individuals appraise and respond to events
What are the 5 basic types of social support?
- Emotional
- Esteem
- Tangible/instrumental
- Informational
- Network
What is the direct effect hypothesis of social support?
Social support is beneficial regardless of the amount of stress
What is the buffering hypothesis of social support?
Social support protects the person against negative effects of high stress
How can stress be reduced at different levels?
- Systemic: Organisations, society, reducing sources of stress
- Individual: Changing strategies to coping with stress
What are the 7 main causes of stress and burnout in hospitals?
- Job
- Role
- Career development
- Relationships at work
- Organisational structures
- Family pressures
- Grieving
What did Beck & Ellis consider stress to be the result of?
Misinterpretations of environmental events/cognitions that exaggerate the negative aspects & influence a person to lose focus on positive aspects
What are the automatic thoughts leading to negative emotions identified by Beck?
- Catastrophic thinking
- Over-generalisations
- Arbitrary inference: Drawing a conclusion without evidence
- Selective abstraction: Focusing on a detail taken out of context
What are some of the factors that can be changed to reduce individual stress?
- Environmental triggers
- Inappropriate behavioural, physiological, cognitive responses
- Identifying triggers
- Identifying & changing cognitive distortions
- High levels of muscle tension/arousal reduced through relaxation
- Stressed behaviours
What are the 3 phases of problem-focused counselling to change stress triggers?
- Problem exploration/clarification: What are the triggers?
- Goal setting: What triggers do you want to change?
- Facilitating action: How do you change the triggers?
What are the 3 phases of learning relaxation skills?
- Learning basic skills
- Monitoring tension in daily life
- Using relaxation at times of stress
What are 2 cognitive interventions for changing cognitions?
- Self-instruction training: Interrupting flow of stress-provoking thoughts, replaces with coping thoughts
- Cognitive restructuring: Identifying/challenging the accuracy of stress-provoking thoughts
What is the downward arrow technique?
Asking key questions to identify distortions in core beliefs when individuals express inappropriate thoughts or reactions to events e.g. losing job because didn’t get drunk at a party
