Stressful Life Events

16. In contrast to the conclusions reached by early stress researchers Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe, contemporary health psychologists now believe that: A) to improve its predictive power, the Social Readjustment Rating Scale needs to be expanded from 43 life events to 125 life events. B) positive life events, such as vacations or marriage, have a

Kelly McGonigal discusses the importance of viewing stress as positive, as opposed to negative, by detailing three specific studies and findings about stress. In the first study, it was discovered that people with a significant amount of stress had a higher mortality rate; however, this was only statistically significant if the subject viewed stress as harmful. If the overly-stressed subject didn’t view stress as harmful, they were actually at the lowest risk of dying, even compared to those with a minimal amount. Therefore, it is important to change a person’s perspective of stress. In particular, McGonigal emphasizes that stress is important for a person’s body: it energizes and prepares them to meet whatever challenge they are facing. Furthermore, it helps the blood vessels remain relaxed, thereby allowing the heart to remain healthy.

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

However, not all research supports the importance of life stressors. For example, Van Os et al reported no link between life events and the onset of schizophrenia. In the prospective part of the study, patients who had experienced a major life event went on to have a lower incidence of relapse rather than an increased risk as predicted.

According to Mayo Clinic, Drastic changes to one’s life, whether positive or negative, can induce stress for the recipient of those

All of this stress has a significant impact on one’s overall health and wellness. From cancer to child mortality, nearly every

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,

The life events theory, introduced by Holmes and Rahe in 1967 takes into account the psychological causes of stress (Bennett, 2000). Their theory claims that life events ranked according to their severity, could add up to cause stress. They could also be weighed against each other lessening stress (Morrison & Bennett, 2016). However, it can’t explain why people who experience the same life events feel different amounts of stress (Bennett, 2000). Further, it fails to consider the emotional experience of stress (Bennett, 2000). A study by Kanner and colleagues (1981) refutes Holmes and Rahe’s assumption that major life events have a greater impact on stress pointing out the limitations of the life events theory. The researchers concentrated on the everyday hassles in life and found their importance comparing them to perceived stress. They found larger relation between hassles and psychological symptoms than between life events and psychological symptoms. Thus, focussing on life changing events, the theory shows limitations in regards to explaining everyday stress.

In everyday life, it is inevitable that an individual will experience some form of stress. This stress may come in the form of daily hassles, inconveniences and major life events such as divorce or the loss of a loved one. When stress becomes traumatic, the individual is at a great risk of developing a stress disorder. According to the DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000), traumatic stress occurs when the individual is presented with a traumatic situation in which the person experiences or witnesses an event that incorporated threats of death or significant harm and the person’s reaction to the event consisted of profound terror, helplessness or revulsion. A traumatic event can be a large-scale event with multiple victims such as natural/human caused disasters, war, mass violence or explicit experience in the death of others. Examples of these large-scale events include 9/11, the Holocaust, Hurricane Katrina etc. Other classification of traumatic events involve unintended acts involving fewer people such as motor vehicle collisions or life threatening illnesses and acts of intended personal violence such as sexual/physical assault, torture or child abuse. These traumatic stressors cause a significant more amount of distress than the everyday stressors mentioned earlier as they cause the individual to challenge

Stress is induced by life events .Lazarus and Flokman in (Cavanaugh and Blanchard –Field (2005) point out stress is defined by the person and that no two people experiences stress the same event in exactly the same way. Each individual has a specific tolerance for stress depending on general level of adjustment, the internal and external resources available to that person, flexibility of learned coping mechanisms and the degree and type of stress being experienced .The rise in stress that results from emotional hazardous

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

There is a very complex relationship between stressful situations, our mind and body’s reaction to stress and the onset of depression. Some people develop depression after going through stressful events in their lives, such as the death of someone close, loss of job and other negative and traumatic problems that can cause large amount of stress (Prentiss, 2009). These problems make us experience a mixture of physical and emotional effects that can create stress as a positive or negative feeling. The human body is designed to experience and react to stress; it can be both a positive and negative influence. Positive stress can give a person the drive and

Other research in the 1990's showed a correlation between high levels of negative life events with increased vulnerability to colds. The trouble with this 'social readjustment rating scale' is that it does not account for the fact that some people will find the same sort of event less stressful than others - for example, divorce could be perceived as a relief or a disaster. We cannot give reliable predictions about risks of stress-related illness based on this scale. Lazarus and colleagues in the 1980s came up with a different stress measurement scale called the 'hassles and uplifts scale'.

Stress is part of our lives. We live with it, deal with it, and above all worry about it. Our way of life, the area in which we live, the economy, and our jobs can cause a great deal of stress. Not everyone deals with the same level of stress and there are several factors that can impact our lives and cause us to have higher or lower stress levels. We can have stress caused by Cataclysmic events which according to Feldman (2009) are events that can affect many people at the same time and are “disasters such as tornado and plane crashes, as well as terrorist attacks”. (p418). Other factors are personal stressors and can be caused by events such as a divorce, death or a loved one or the loss of a job. (Feldman, 2009). The