General Adaptation Syndrome: The Effects Of Stress

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

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.

One of the many strengths of GAS model is the fact that it involves the concept that resources can be exhausted, escalating the person’s vulnerability to illness. This physiological approach also has its limitations. It is difficult to even out what is a stressor like any known condition could result in various stages of stress to distinctive individuals, and different stressors could cause various stages of stress to one individual (Mason,

Stress was defined by Selye as "the nonspecific response of the body to any demand" (Christopher, 1996), the

Our book describes stress as “any circumstances that threaten or are perceived to threaten one’s well-being and tax one’s coping ability” (Weiten, 2014). Stress is not necessarily a traumatic, life destroying event. It can be as simple a small change in one’s daily schedule. People will have multiple stresses throughout their lifetime. Some will be little and daily, but overtime these add up and can affect you in many ways. Stress can be positive or negative and can take many forms; a few being frustration, internal conflict, change, and pressure. All of which make almost a daily appearance in my life (Weiten, 2014).

Subtle or covert microaggressions may prove to be more psychologically damaging than overt ones, any may also present more catch-22s for the victim. This is because it may be hard to accept that the attacker may not be a true ally and thus alter a relationship, along with uncertainty if the message contained prejudicial meaning, while being unclear on how to deal with it (88). The general adaption syndrome model was created to explain reactions the body experiences from these assaults. The alarm stage, or “call to arms,” occurs when a person senses physical or emotional threat in order to protect themselves against potential harm. They experience physiological effects such as increased blood pressure and heartrate. Next, the adaption/resistance process occurs where the body protects against such harm, preparing to wipe out disease or nurture injury, or adapt to it instead, if unable to successfully get rid of it. Because of this, those of marginalized groups become blind to prejudicial assaults. The stage of exhaustion occurs after the accumulation of these effects on the body, along with its spirit, begins to disintegrate and shut down, ultimately affecting the victims’ social interactions and their overall health (89). Another model was created called the Crisis Decomposition Model that deals with the ways the body copes with stress. Impact occurs when dealing with a stressful incident causes confusion, depression, isolation, and upset feelings. Attempted resolution then

The General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) can measure physiological response to stress. It starts with the alarm phase, where you recognize the stimulus and decide you need to confront the stress that you have. This activates the sympathetic nervous system and deactivates the parasympathetic nervous system. It releases a stress hormone that is a biological marker of stress. Once you have evaluated the situation and decided what to do, you enter the resistance phase, in which the body starts to address the stimulus and tries to go into

In contemporary U.S.A, it can be very challenging keeping up with our fast pace society. Since we are a nation where everything is expected to get done as quickly as possible, and everything seems to have deadlines that must be met especially in the work field; it’s no surprise when we must stare stress right in the face at one point or another. For some of us, it’s as frequent as every day that stress arises and luckily for others, it’s not as much. However, whatever the case maybe we all have had and will go through stressful events in our lifetime. How one chooses to cope with stress is solely up to them. Although, there is one thing that is for certain and that is high levels of stress can be detrimental to one 's health, but there are a variety of precautionary coping methods in which one can defeat this ongoing battle with the evil entity—stress.

A Canadian scientist by the name of Hans Selye name the result of his research the general adaptation syndrome, or GAS for short. He described the process of stress as a 3-way process. There is phase one, alarm reaction, phase two, resistance, and phase three, exhaustion. Being unable to cope with a stressor and remaining in the last phase for too long can have negative health effects. Men and women both traditionally deal with stress in different ways. Men, and least more often than women, tend to socially withdraw, turn to alcohol, or become aggressive, while women more often respond by nurturing and bonding together (Myers, 2014).

Stress is an emotional state that is difficult to define because everyone experiences stress in different ways. Pathologically speaking, stress is the brain’s response to certain demands for change and can be positive or negative depending on the individual. This state of mind is induced by physical and emotional stimuli; this in turn generates a response that affects many aspects of a person’s wellbeing. Psychological, behavioral and biological stressors all play a role in an individual’s mood, sense of well-being, behavior and health (Schneiderman, Ironson, & Siegel, Stress and health: psychological, behavioral, and biological determinants, 2005). These factors can threaten our internal homeostasis which

Stress can be broadly defined as any stimulus that disrupts homeostasis, with the stress response referring to physiological and behavioral reactions to such a stimulus (Selye, 1950). It

“The General Adaptation Syndrome consists of three stages, the alarm reaction, resistance, and exhaustion stages” (Doerner,2016). Within the three stages the alarm reaction consists of hastening the makings of certain hormones and substances in the body. Nevertheless, this stage makes the heart thump faster and breathing becomes swifter.” The longer an individual has to adapt to a certain kind of stress and the more intensive the effect of the stressor, the higher the probability of burnout” (Vuorensyrjä, and Mälkiä,2011). Nonetheless, an example would be walking in the dark and someone jumped out to frighten you. Moreover, the second step would be the resistance stage. “Stress and burnout are difficult and multifaceted conceptual constructs

In this journal, Hammen (2015) mentions different articles that include studies done with samples of various age groups, such as children, adolescents, and adults, on the role of stress, which has been thought to be mainly derived from depression for long periods of time. Nevertheless, the range of the role of stress has been expanded and applied to other psychological disorders over time, as well as to the wide variety of experiments on human stress processes and the study of various conceptual models (Hammen, 2015). Therefore, Hammen (2015) questions how the results from a collection of articles on stress can be combined to draw a more unified conclusions, and how these conclusions can be beneficial towards understanding and making improvements

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

“Stress is a silent disease” (Doctor Hobel). Over the years, stress has played a major rule in a large majority of people’s lives throughout the United States. When thought about, it is said to be extremely surprising as to how many people really have stress in each individual’s life. People do not consider what the reasons are for the feelings and emotions they experience. There are all different types of stress, and stress can do a lot to a person. Each person also handles stress in a different way. Some can handle more than others, because every single person’s body works in a different way. Stress has also been told to cause people to act out of character (Dr. David Posen). They often do not act the way they usually would while under