The Potential Effects Of Stress And Trauma

Sitting in the middle of the floor was a sixteen year old girl who had just finished a basketball game. Usually after games, the girl would sit with the rest of the team to watch the boys play. Instead, the girl walked out of the gym with tears freely falling from her cheeks hoping nobody would notice them. After she had sat down, a few members of the team noticed her absence and went looking for her. The reason the girl didn’t want to be seen with tears was because some others on the team had been experiencing the same thing that she was. What this girl was experiencing was emotional trauma created by her male coach. The

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,

Trauma occurs when a child has experienced an event that threatens or causes harm to her emotional and physical well-being. Events can include war, terrorism, natural disasters, but the most common and harmful to a child’s psychosocial well-being are those such as domestic violence, neglect, physical and sexual abuse, maltreatment, and witnessing a traumatic event. While some children may experience a traumatic event and go on to develop normally, many children have long lasting implications into adulthood.

Exposure to traumatic stressors is a critical element of probation work. Despite the tremendous amount of research on primary and secondary trauma, there is a paucity of research regarding the risks and effects of primary and secondary trauma on corrections personnel, and specifically female probation officers. Working as a probation officer involves a variety of roles and includes exposure to direct danger from threatening clients as well as exposure to secondary trauma in the form of “trauma material, including graphic descriptions of violent events, exposure to the realities of people’s cruelty to one another”

, peri- and post-trauma factors which influence the likelihood of PTSD. A history of prior

For many of the young people at LAYN the violence and trauma they experienced throughout their life, almost always chronic and pervasive, is unimaginable. The vast majority of RHY and foster youth have experienced complex trauma, and the young people at LAYN are no different. These young people come to LAYN having experienced multiple and concurrent traumas throughout their short lifetime including: physical, emotional and sexual abuse-often within the caretaking relationship, community violence, victimization and sexual exploitation, extreme poverty and homelessness, parental mental illness, substance abuse and incarceration, and abandonment, illness and death. The traumas that RHY and foster youth experience are compounded by their attachment history, developmental stage in life and their experiences of discrimination and oppression throughout society.

The Effects of Stress According to Karyn M. Frick, "Chronic stress, the stress experienced overtime, can profoundly interfere with psychological and brain function" (37). Survivor is a show where contestants are put into situations which can push them to the limit. People compete in extreme conditions where they are challenged both physically and mentally. It is easy to see why the contestants get so stressed out on this show.

I think there are times that we are stressed, but we don’t realize it. I think this situation is true for both acute stress and chronic stress. For example, I was pulled over last night, and when the police ask me things and gave me the ticket, I seems very calm. At the time I was not nervous, because I did not really do something illegal. But after the police left, I realized my heart is beating really fast, and I feel hard to continue driving. I was actually very nervous and stressed. But it all happened too fast, I didn’t even experience the stress at the time. Another example, I was feeling backache for a whole week. I didn’t know why and I didn’t really cared about it. But my backache went away after I finished all my finals. Then I realized

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),

Eyes scanning from left to right, dials and switches turning on and off, pilots verbally communicating back and forth; all occurring thousands of feet up in the air. The ability to divert one 's attention across the user interface of the cockpit, while simultaneously flying the airplane, in continuous observation of stimuli outside of the plane, and verbally communicating with the flight staff, was an eye-opening experience. I was transfixed in how two pilots and one flight engineer were absorbed in the numerous tasks affiliated with flying, as I stood watch as a passenger in the cockpit of C-130. My initial thought was, how stressful of an environment to perform so many tasks, at such a quick pace. Intrigued by this question, I narrowed down my interests in psychology to the investigation of how stress, motivation, and task variation can effect attention and performance under threatening environments. Furthermore, how those constructs effect occupational safety and dictate human performance within a work environment. More specifically, I am interested in exploring the question of what countermeasures can be used to improve how we attend to important information under stress-induced work environments. Every individual is not equipped with the right skills to endure graduate school, but with my strong determination to push for more, the curiosity for research that tremors off my bones, and the substantial amount of research experience that I have acquired

Stress is a state of emotional or mental tension or strain resulting from very demanding and adverse circumstances in an individual’s life. The term general adaptation syndrome (GAS) is used in describing the long-term and short-term reactions to stress through its three stages that explain an individual’s experience with stress. The alarm reaction stage is the initial stage where an individual reacts immediately to a stressor exhibiting a "fight or flight" response that prepares one’s body for any physical activity. This stage may however, result in decreased immune system effectiveness, making individuals more prone to an illness during this phase. The resistance is the second stage where f stress continues one’s the body forms an adaptation to the stressors with different levels of changes taking place to reduce the effectors stress. The exhaustion stage is the third one where one’s body resistance resistance to stress may gradually reduce or collapse quickly meaning that one’s immune system to resisting diseases may be almost eliminated.

To be a pilot one of the gold rules is to be healthy. Stress has characteristics and characteristics are often described as insidious and cumulative. An insidious character of stress has a gradual and cumulative effect, developing so slowly that stress can be well established before becoming apparent. Pilots may think that they are handling everything quite well, when in fact there are subtle signs that they have gone beyond their ability to respond appropriately. In other case we have the stress in cumulative in which a generalised stress reaction can develop as a result of accumulated stress. There is no limit to a pilots adaptive nature – the stress tolerance level – based on a pilots ability to cope with the situation. If the number or intensity of stress factor becomes too great, you are susceptible to an environmental overload, and at this point, performance begins to decline and judgement deteriorates. In this final section I would like to explain about the signs of stress and how can we deal with stress. We have 4 types of signs of stress, physiological, psychological, cognitive, behavioural. Physiological symptoms are cardiovascular,

Internal sources of stress may come from an individual's perception to an event, and the individual's personality and fear. External sources of stress in the cockpit may include, turbulence, dehydration, eye strain and lack of oxygen. Walonick(1993) has mentioned Abrecht's work(1979), which argues that nearly all stressors are emotionally induced. Emotionally induced stress usually arise from imagination. In addition, emotionally induced stress can be further divided into four categories of time stress, anticipatory stress, situational stress and encounter stress Time stress is due to a real or imaginary deadline. Anticipatory stress is caused by perceiving an upcoming event will be unpleasant. Situational stress arise when an individual faces unpleasant event and worries about what happen next. Encounter stress occurs when there is a contact with others. Time stress is the most common among pilots as 'A pilot lives a life of deadlines.'(Jeeva and Chandramohan, 2008). Stress can also be caused by alcohol consumption, self medication, drug, tobacco use, inadequate diet and nutrition. In short, we may encounter stress everyday and it is unavoidable.