Stress, Arousal and Health

Stress Defined

• Stress is experienced emotionally, physiologically, behaviorally, and cognitively.
• After a stressful experience, healthy people usually return to their homeostatic baseline.
• Fight or flight describes the physiological response to either confront a stressor or escape from it.
• Selye's (1956) General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) is a three-stage model of chronic stress.

Stages of Stress

• The stages of stress includes alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
• The body deals with stressors during the resistance stage until natural resources are depleted.
• During the exhaustion stage the body's systems break down and illness/premature death can occur.
• Selye identified two types of stress: distress (negative) and eustress (positive).

Appraisal

• Appraisal involves making a judgment about the relative significance of an event and evaluating it as a threat or challenge.
• Appraisal patterns are linked to specific emotional responses.
• Experiencing a demeaning offense can lead to anger.
• Lazarus identified 15 appraisals, called core relational themes.
• Stress is often thought of as negative (distress).
• Stress is defined as cognitive, emotional, physiological, and behavioral reactions experienced from perceived threats and challenges.

Health Defined

• The biopsychosocial model views health as a product of biological, psychological, and social influences.
• Health exists on a continuum from very ill to super well.
• The mind and body are an interactive whole.
• Mind-body dualism views the mind and body as separate.

Psychosomatic Medicine

• Psychosomatic medicine says intrapsychic conflict can lead to somatic conversions expressed as physical symptoms.
• It was inspired by Freud and challenged mind-body dualism
• Social and psychological factors can cause illness.
• The individual is more responsible for their health in the biopsycholsocial model.

Behavioral Medicine

• Behavioral medicine applies elements of behavioral sciences to illness prevention and treatment
• It's a multi-disciplinary field which helps people maximize their health.
• Health psychology uses scientific/professional knowledge of psychology to promote health and treat illness.

Wellness

• Wellness is a global approach to health including stress management, healthy living (nutrition and exercise), and activities for personal growth.
• The WHO defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."

Impact of Stress

• Stressors can produce detrimental physical and psychological changes like worry anxiety, depression, and inability to make decisions.
• Physiological reactions to stress include increased heart rate, headaches, and frequent illnesses.
• There is an optimal zone of mid-level physiological arousal, neither under-stimulated nor over-stimulated.

Longevity

• Lifestyle-related variables impact lifespan.
• Exercise increases the chances of living long, while smoking, diabetes, and obesity lowers it.
• Stress can interrupt healthy decisions beginning a vicious cycle of stress contributing to poor health.
• Exercise is good for health and reduces stress.

Physiology of Stress

• Stressors evoke fight-or-flight reactions in different body systems.
• The autonomic nervous system enervates the organ systems.
• The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for arousal response.
• Norepinephrine and epinephrine primes the body to respond to a stressor.
• Food stores are converted into glucose for energy.

Selye's General Adaptation System

• Selye described physiological changes as stress reactions.
• Non-specific responses are common patterns to various stressors.
• When first subjected to a stressor, an organism activates fight-or-flight response.
• Activation brings on the alarm stage.
• With repeated stress there comes the resistance stage.
• Allostatic load is the chronic stress that begins to wear down the systems.
• In the exhaustion stage, repeated stress leads to illness and potential death.
• The diathesis-stress model is similar to GAS, but suggests illness may result from the interaction of biology and environment, therefore each case is unique.
• GAS doesn't address the psychological processes that affect appraisal.
• Selye claimed universality, however, this is untrue.
• GAS is overly general in explaining response responses to everyday stressors.

Lazarus's Appraisal/Coping Model

• It is a three-process cognitive model of stress and coping.
• Primary appraisal evaluates the present/potential harm or loss from an event.
• Secondary appraisal evaluates coping resources, if there aren't enough resources available, a threat is experienced.
• Reappraisal may change the event meaning to minimize reactions to stress.

Summary

• Stress models have moved from biological to cognitive.
• Cannon's model focused on fight-or-flight response.
• Selye's GAS model showed the negative effects of stress.
• Lazarus's model focused on constant appraisal and subjective experience.
• The biopsychosocial model places health on a continuum.
• Health/wellness are a result of cognitive, emotional, psychological, physiological, and behavioral changes.
• An overall healthy lifestyle leads to longevity.