An Online Questionnaire Screening For Stress Experienced During Childhood Essay

Humans frequently turn on the stress response that was intended to assist our survival in reaction to the everyday challenges we face. Professor Michael Marmot conducted a study in England of 28,000 people’s health over a course of 40 years. Each person was a British

Schneiderman, N., Ironson, G., & Siegel, S. D. (2005). STRESS AND HEALTH: Psychological, Behavioral, and Biological Determinants. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1,

Stress Is the body’s way of responding to the hectic lives most of us live, whether good or bad. The body releases chemicals into the bloodstream, which creates a rush of energy and strength If an individual is feeling stressed. This energy can prove useful if an individual is in physical danger. Because it enables a person’s survival instinct kicks in; it is often described as ‘fight or flight.’ In addition, stress can also have a negative effect on the body, for example: suffering from stress and leaving it unchecked can contribute to health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.

There are three different theories that are used when talking about how we react to stress through the physiological aspect or the psychological aspect. The first is part of the physiological aspect of stress called the Cannon Fight or Flight theory which was proposed in 1914. Fight or Flight response is a physiological stress response that evolved to help organisms to survive immediate danger. The theory states that when an organism, human being or animal, faces imminent danger (acute stressor) the body arouses quickly and is ready to act via two different systems. They are the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system. The sympathetic nervous system stimulates the adrenal medulla which is part of the endocrine system and is the region that produces the hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline. These hormones increase heart rate, blood flow, and glucose levels to prepare the body for an emergency. This response from the body suggests that the body knows how to protect itself and reach homeostasis. These two systems work together to either fight against the danger or flight away from the danger. Lord, King and Pfister in 1976 studied the Fight or Flight response in animals through a very unethical study. They administered chemicals on male hooded Wistar rats which inhibited the neurotransmitters from functioning normally. This made it very difficult for the rats to escape an electric shock. The results of the study suggest that the Flight or Fight response

When put under stress, both humans and baboons have cortisol and adrenaline found in their blood. These hormones are critical for survival, and other physical changes in the body such as a racing heart, increased blood pressure, and quickly responding muscles are all present when the body is put under stress. However, in regard to humans, these same physical responses can occur when the body is not in a life in death situation. Instead, it is common for psychological stresses such as public speaking, taking a test, paying taxes, or driving a vehicle to invoke the same physiological responses as someone in a critical situation. This can be unhealthy for the human body, as many people can get worked up over multiple stressors in one day,

The events or situations that can produce stress are called stressors. To measure the amount of stress a single event can cause two men named Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe came up wit this idea of the Social Readjustment Rating Scale. This scale “includes 43 life events” each event comes with a point value for the amount of stress that each event should given. However more than “150 life change units within a year had an increased rate of physical or psychological illness”. Over time this scale has been modified to accommodated for gender, age, martial status, and individual characteristics. Even with the modifications made, the way each person copes with stress is quite different therefore this scale does not apply to the majority of people. Likewise this scale did help research to find that “negative life events have a more adverse effect on health than a positive event.”. Therefore traumatic events “ are events or situations that are negative; serve, and far beyond our normal expectation for everyday life or life events.” These negative events can cause extreme stress on a person which can lead to health issues. For instance PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder can cause anxiety, nervousness, sleep disturbances, and irritability. To help to resolve the health issues that come with stress many try to develop resilience. Though contrary to popular belief the

Youth sports is a common thing for kids to be apart of growing up, parents sign their kids up in hope of creating lifelong friendships, encouraging physical activity, and most of all to have fun. Youth sports was also created to introduce all different types of sports to children and have it open their eyes to different activities. Calvin H. Chang is the author of Handbook of Sports Psychology. Cheng explains how stress is caused at such a young age and most likely because of the pressure of their parents. Cheng mentioned “behavioral indicators of state anxiety include insomnia, losing one’s appetite, nervous laughter and being jittery. Physiological changes include increased heart rate, respiration, galvanic skin responses, and palmar sweating. Psychological measures include state anxiety and other in-depth measurements of negative thoughts and feelings” (Cheng 172). The stress from youth sports is taking a toll on children and causing their body more harm than good. Parents want what is best for their children, but they are pushing them harder than what they can handle. Jane E. Brody is the Personal Health columnist for The New York Times. She joined The Times as a

Viewed from an evolutionary standpoint, in early times stress caused the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system resulting in an outpouring of the hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine, and glucocorticoids that were essential to the life-preserving fight or flight reactions of primitive man (Anthony 1988). However, the nature of stress for the individual today is different. It is only occasionally and unexpectedly that one is confronted with overwhelming, life-threatening stresses. Present stresses arise from everyday stresses of work, finances and school. The problem is that the body still continues to respond in the same fashion as primitive times. This makes the large release of hormones very harmful. They can cause an increase in blood pressure, damage muscle tissue, lead to infertility, inhibit growth, damage the hippocampus and suppress the immune system (Carlson 1994). It is therefore, important that individuals learn to control the stresses in their lives. The more detrimental coping behaviors will cause a larger change

Stress is known to negatively impact health. Psychological responses, such as mood, emotion and coping, influence the way we perceive stress and the impact it has on the physiological response (Chida & Hamer, 2008). Past studies have used the hormone cortisol to test the stress response(Dickerson &

Stress is a subjective response involving interactions between an individual and the environment that is appraised by the individual as being detrimental to their mental and physical wellbeing (Selye, 2013). A combination of genetics, life stressors and ongoing stress can increase vulnerability to psychiatric disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety (Haddadi & Besharat, 2010), alongside physiological disorders such as cardiovascular disease (Seery, 2011). However, the response to stress can be mediated by overcoming the adverse effects of risk exposure, avoiding negative trajectories and learning to cope successfully with traumatic experiences. This process of adapting to the environment following a stressful

Firdaus Dhabhar gave a short lecture on August 19th, 2015 about the good effects that stress can have on our lives. I read two papers published by Dr. Dhabhar in the last five years, both concerning his research on the biological response of stress and how this can impact our daily lives as well as how it can be both detrimental and essential to good health. Each paper explored stress, one was more focused on the physical and the other focused on both the physical and the mental. Given my own project this summer, I was especially interested in the paper published by Aschbacher and colleagues in 2013 because they also explored cortisol reactivity to stress. While their project and my project looked at very different things in very different populations it was exciting to read more about cortisol and how people are exploring this hormone’s role in our stress

The effects of stress and heart disease is explained in a study Chida and Steptoe (2009), in which investigators looked at populations of people in healthy known areas, and assessed in total twenty five different studies. Anger and hostility has a positive relationship with coronary heart disease and was greater in men compared to women. Their findings also showed that individuals who had cardiac arrest and were resuscitated, twenty five percent admitted to feeling extremely stressed with work and family instances just twenty four hours before they had cardiac arrest. Daily activities that provoked moderate, acute stress demonstrated lower levels of blood supply to the hearts muscle. Deanfield et al. (1984)

Psychological stress is a result of many factors and should be dealt with very carefully. Stress can be defined as “An excess of demand made upon the adaptive capabilities of the mind and body”.(Joseph 1). Another way of putting it, is that there are some things that put certain demands on us. The effects of stress should not be limited to unpleasant emotional states. Many studies have concluded that the effects on our physical health from stress can be extremely detrimental. These adverse physical effects include heart disease and formations of cancer. There are also some societal issues that psychological stress can hamper.

Psychological and physical well-being and the overall quality of life are under a constant threat of stress and thus, psychological and medical sciences have long been concerned with studying stress response. Cox (1979) claimed that because of the poor understanding and defining it, the concept of stress tends to be rather elusive. The term, “stress”, commonly describes any physchological or physical alteration that deranges the organism’s homeostasis (or balance). This essay reviews some of the biological factors involved in stress and it has been organized in the following way. The paper begins by briefly introducing the concept of stress. It will then go on to discus and describe the automatic response (fight or flight reaction),

The external component of the Biopsychosocial Model of stress involves environmental events that precede the recognition of stress and can elicit a stress response. A previously mentioned, the stress reaction is elicited by a wide variety of psychosocial stimuli that are either physiologically or emotionally threatening and disrupt the body's homeostasis (Cannon, 1932). We are usually aware of stressors when we feel conflicted, frustrated, or pressured. Most of the common stressors fall within four broad categories: personal, social/familial, work, and the environment. These stressful events have been linked to a variety of psychological physical complaints. For example bereavement