STRESS AND HEALTHCherokee 2011

Refusal Skills Training: Program that teaches young people how to resist pressures to begin smoking

Life Skills Training: Teaches stress reduction, self-protection, decision making, self-control, and social skills

Wellness: Positive state of good health and well-being

Stress

Mental and physical condition that occurs when a person must adjust or adapt to the environment Includes marital and financial problems Eustress: Good stress (e.g., travel, dating)

Stress Reaction: Physical response to stress Autonomic Nervous System is aroused

Stressor: Condition or event that challenges or threatens the person

Pressure: When a person must meet urgent external demands or expectations

Burnout: Job-related condition (usually in helping professions) of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. Has three aspects: Emotional Exhaustion: Feel “used up” and

“empty” Cynicism or detachment from others Feeling of reduced personal accomplishment

Primary Appraisal: Deciding if a situation is relevant or irrelevant, positive or threatening

Secondary Appraisal: Deciding how to cope with a threat or challenge

Perceived lack of control is just as threatening as an actual lack of control

Problem-Focused Coping: Managing or altering the distressing situation

Emotion-Coping Focusing: Trying to control one’s emotional reactions to the situation

Frustration: Negative emotional state that occurs when one is prevented from reaching desired goals External Frustration: Based on external

conditions that impede progress toward a goal Personal Frustration: Caused by personal

characteristics that impede progress toward a goal

Aggression: Any response made with the intention of doing harm

Displaced Aggression: Redirecting aggression to a target other than the source of one’s frustration

Scapegoating: Blaming a person or group for conditions they did not create; the scapegoat is a habitual target of displaced aggression

Escape: May mean actually leaving a source of frustration (dropping out of school) or psychologically escaping (apathy)

Conflicts A stressful condition that occurs when a person

must choose between contradictory needs, desires, motives, or demands

Avoidance-Avoidance Conflicts: Being forced to choose between two negative or undesirable alternatives (e.g., choosing between going to the doctor or contracting cancer) NOT choosing may be impossible or undesirable

Approach-Avoidance Conflicts: Being attracted (drawn to) and repelled by the same goal or activity; attraction keeps person in the situation, but negative aspects can cause distress Ambivalence: Mixed positive and negative

feelings; central characteristic of approach-avoidance conflicts

Double Approach-Avoidance Conflicts: Each alternative has both positive and negative qualities

Vacillation: When one is attracted to both choices; seeing the positives and negatives of both choices and going “back and forth” before deciding, if deciding at all!

Multiple Approach-Avoidance Conflicts: When several alternatives have positive and negative features

Health Psychology:What are some sources of Stress?

1. Approach-approach conflicts:Both outcomes are positive and both are of approximately equal value.

We would like to approach both outcomes but only one is possible.

Example = choosing between two good job offers.

Health Psychology:What are some sources of Stress?

3. Approach-avoidance conflicts:

Achieving the positive outcome requires accepting a negative outcome as well.

People want the positive outcome but also want to avoid the negative outcome.

Example: marrying your girlfriend against your parents wishes means they will take you out of their will.

Health Psychology:What are some sources of Stress?

4.Multiple approach-avoidance conflicts:

Both outcomes have positive and negative consequences.

Example: one job pays poorly but your boss is easygoing; the other job pays extremely well but the boss is a taskmaster.

Learned Helplessness (Seligman)

Acquired (learned) inability to overcome obstacles and avoid aversive stimuli; learned passivity Occurs when events appear to be

uncontrollable May feel helpless if failure is attributed to

lasting, general factors

Cardiac Personalities

Type A Personality: Personality type with elevated risk of heart attack; characterized by time urgency and chronic anger or hostility

Anger and hostility may be the key factors of this behavior

Type B Personality: All types other than Type As; unlikely to have a heart attack

Hardy Personality

Personality type associated with superior stress resistance

Sense of personal commitment to self and family Feel they have control over their lives See life as a series of challenges,

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

) Series of bodily reactions to prolonged stress; occurs in three stages

Stage of Resistance: Body adjusts to stress but at a high physical cost; resistance to other stressors Is lowered

Stage of Exhaustion: Body’s resources are drained and stress hormones are depleted, possibly resulting in: Psychosomatic disease Loss of health Complete collapse