Mental health articles

physical signs of stress  Stress is psychological and physical arousal to the demands of life. A stressful
situation is one appraised as taxing or exceeding one’s personal resources
and endangering well-being. Richard Lazarus states that “stress is a condition
or feeling when a person perceives demands exceeding personal and social
resource[s]” (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
One of the challenges in discussing stress is the diversity of experiences
and reactions related to it. What is extremely stressful for one person may
be a source of pleasure for another. Th us, moving away from family may be
extremely upsetting for one student, but a thrill for the next. Graduating from
college may bring joy and a sense of accomplishment, or evoke anxiety. Parttime
employment may be a pleasant diversion, or a pressured drain of time.
Th ere also may be gender diff erences in response to stress. While the general
response has always been characterized as “fi ght or fl ight,” the response for
the majority of women may be “tend and befriend”; a research team at UCLA found that a majority of women responded to stress with nurturing activities
and the development of social networks. Th is team’s biobehavioral explanation
is that women secrete a higher level of the hormone oxytocin, which is
responsible for reducing anxiety and promoting social behavior. Th e research
team suggests that this diff erence may explain women’s greater longevity and
lesser aggressiveness (Taylor et al., 2000). On the other hand, the possible difference
in coping strategies does not reduce the need for eff ective stress management,
since research indicates that more female students report feeling
stressed than males (Hudd et al., 2000).
Generally, stress induces an arousal of the sympathetic branch of the
autonomic nervous system, resulting in increases in blood pressure, gastrointestinal
activity, muscle tension, rate of breathing, kidney activity, and
sweating. But within this general response system, individual responses are
idiosyncratic, and people develop a variety of physical, behavioral, and cognitive
symptoms. Th e most prominent reactions are irritability, anger, disrupted
relationships, exhaustion, agitation, headaches, low back pain, hypertension,
change in sleep and/or eating patterns, preoccupation, and depressed feelings.
Perhaps the most common reaction is a change in sleep patterns, with estimates
of 85% of stress suff erers either losing sleep or falling into excessive
sleep patterns (Verlander, Benedict, & Hanson, 1999).
Th e way a person reacts to stress can create further stress. For example,
irritability and anger can lead to disrupted relationships. Sleep disruption
reduces the individual’s ability to carry out daily functions; exhaustion makes
completing academic work more diffi cult. Overeating or undereating reduces
the person’s ability to function. Perhaps most clearly misguided is the attempt
to reduce stress through alcohol or other drugs. All these reactions propel the
person into a vicious cycle of escalating problems.

Tags: stress