Health, Stress, & Coping
Health, Stress, & Coping
Key Issue: Why Does Stress Matter? (Module 14.1)
Stress is a crucial topic in health psychology, as it has significant implications for both mental and physical health.
According to statistics from Statista (2020), understanding stress is tied to overarching health and wellness goals in Canada.
Specifically, stress can be defined and evaluated through various metrics:
Intensity or Severity: How intense the stressor is can determine health impacts.
Duration: Stress can be acute (short-term) or chronic (long-term).
Predictability and Controllability: Stressors that are unpredictable and uncontrollable have a greater adverse impact on health.
Importance of Stress
Unmanaged stress can lead to significant mental and physical health challenges.
Stress is a common denominator and a precipitating factor for all psychological disorders.
Key Issue: To understand stress, we must first define it clearly.
What is Stress? (Module 14.2)
Stress is defined as:
“A psychological and physiological (and behavioral) reaction or response that occurs when demands exceed existing resources to meet those demands.”
Stress can involve:
Events (Stressors): Situations such as family gatherings or deadlines. Events can be:
Acute: Short-term stressors.
Chronic: Long-term stressors.
Experiences in Response to Stressors: This includes physiological, psychological, and behavioral responses.
Types of Stress Events
Various stressor types include:
Catastrophes: Unexpected and large-scale events.
Major negative events: Significant occurrences requiring major adaptation by individuals.
Microstressors: Daily hassles and frustrations that can compound stress.
Psychological Response to Stress (Cognitive Appraisal Theory)
Proposed by Lazarus & Folkman (1984), it consists of two appraisals:
Primary appraisal: Assessment of demands and their degree.
Secondary appraisal: Evaluation of the resources available to cope.
A greater imbalance between demands and available coping resources leads to higher levels of potential stress.
Stress and Performance
Stress can have positive and negative impacts on performance:
Negative Impacts: Can lead to difficulties in thinking, attention, memory, and decision-making.
Positive Impacts: Stress may enhance performance under pressure (following the inverted U-curve model).
Optimal Stress Level: Each individual has an ‘individual zone of optimal functioning’ (IZOF), which represents the range of arousal allowing for peak performance.
Elements of a Stress Response (Module 14.2)
Behavioral responses to stress can be:
Adaptive: Such as planning and scheduling.
Maladaptive: Includes avoidance, procrastination, outbursts of anger, and other negative actions.
Physiological Responses to Stress include:
The fight-or-flight response (Cannon) is an immediate response triggered by the sympathetic nervous system.
General Adaptation Syndrome (Selye): A theory of stress response over time, consisting of three phases:
Alarm: Immediate response to a stressor.
Resistance: Utilization of mental and physical resources to cope with the stressor.
Exhaustion: Depletion of resources, leading to diminished coping ability.
The length of each phase depends on various factors, such as the severity of the stressor and the individual's coping capabilities.
Additional Physiological Responses to Stress
Activation of physiological pathways includes:
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) response and hormone release (adrenaline and noradrenaline) for the fight-or-flight mechanism.
The HPA (Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal) axis response, which releases cortisol, facilitating greater access to energy stores for coping.
Evolutionary Perspective on Stress Responses
The evolutionary value of different stress responses includes:
Oxytocin: A stress-sensitive hormone that encourages social responses during stress, often leading to behaviors like seeking social contact.
Research suggests a tendency where males may gravitate towards a fight-or-flight response, while females tend towards a “tend and befriend” response, enhancing social support.
Stress and Health Outcomes
Research indicates some correlations between stress and health:
Acute stressors may activate the immune system, while chronic stressors could suppress it.
There is a greater risk for coronary heart disease linked to increased stress levels:
Type A personality is associated with a higher risk of heart disease compared to Type B.
Individuals displaying higher hostility and anger appear to be at greater risk.
Stress can influence various behavioral choices such as diet and lifestyle.
Coping with Stress (Module 14.3)
Coping refers to:
“The processes used to manage demands, stress, and conflict.”
Coping Strategies include:
Problem-Focused Coping: Seeking solutions directly confronting the stressor.
Emotion-Focused Coping: Managing emotional responses to stress, taking into account controllability.
Social Support: Turning to others for assistance, offering emotional, appraisal, informational, and instrumental types of support.
The Role of Social Support in Coping
Social support is protective against stress, including:
Emotional Support: Addresses the feelings surrounding the stressor.
Appraisal Support: Facilitates the evaluation of the stressor.
Informational Support: Provides information useful for coping.
Instrumental Support: Assistance with tasks to cope with stressors.
The effectiveness of social support is attributed to:
Hormonal activation (e.g., oxytocin) that occurs during social interactions, inhibiting cortisol production.
Boosting the immune system and enhancing an individual's sense of identity and meaning, along with allowing the release of negative emotions.
Additional Protective Factors Against Stress
Strategies for positivity and resilience include:
Creating opportunities for positive emotions, which can help broaden perspectives and build resilience (Fredrickson, 2001).
Practicing optimism by focusing on favorable outcomes.
Resilience is defined as the ability to recover from illness or adversity.
Post-traumatic growth refers to the capacity to experience long-term positive effects following negative events.
Techniques to manage physical and psychological stress responses include:
Biofeedback: A therapeutic approach using physiological monitoring to provide feedback on bodily reactions.
Meditation and relaxation techniques: To focus the mind and reduce distractions.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR): Enhances connection between body and mind.
Exercise: Both resistance training and cardiovascular activities yield health benefits, including stress reduction and enhanced self-esteem.
Importance of Perception of Control
The belief of lacking control can foster learned helplessness, a generalized response to perceived uncontrollable stressors.
A sense of control is associated with improved physical and mental well-being.
Vulnerability Factors to Monitor
Certain factors may hinder effective coping strategies, including:
Emotional-focused coping tends to ignore the situation rather than address it.
Character traits of Type A personalities (such as aggression, competitiveness, and a quick temper) can correlate with negative health outcomes.
Lifestyle choices like poor dietary habits and substance abuse (drugs, alcohol, smoking) are detrimental to coping effectively.