Stress & Health Psychology Overview

Stress & Health Psychology

• This presentation is about stress and health psychology, covering topics like stress definition, stressors, relationship with illness, health psychology, and stress management.
• Learning outcomes include defining and explaining stress and stressors, discussing the stress-illness relationship, defining health psychology, and discussing health and stress management.

Understanding Stress

• Stress is a non-specific response of the body to any demand placed upon it.
• It involves arousal in response to perceived threatening or challenging situations.
• Stressors are triggers that generate stressful reactions.
• Eustress is desirable stress, while distress is undesirable.

Signs and Symptoms of Ongoing Stress

• Emotional signs include anxiety, apathy, irritability, and fatigue.
• Behavioral signs include avoidance of responsibilities and relationships, self-neglect, and poor judgment.
• Physical signs include excessive worry about illness, frequent illness, and overuse of medications.

Sources of Stress

• Life Changes: life events requiring lifestyle adjustments, measured by the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS).
• Chronic Stressors: ongoing, unpleasant events like bad marriages or poor working conditions.
• Hassles: small, everyday problems that accumulate, like traffic jams or scheduling conflicts. Burnout is a physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion linked to hassles.
• Frustration: unpleasant tension arising from blocked goals.
• Conflict: choosing between two or more incompatible goals or impulses. The stress from conflict depends on its complexity and difficulty resolving it. Types of conflict include approach-approach (two desirable options), avoidance-avoidance (two undesirable options), and approach-avoidance (one option with both desirable and undesirable aspects).

Effects of Stress: A Dual System

• Stress initiates physiological changes.
• The sympathetic nervous system activates, raising heart rate, blood pressure, and hormone levels. This is a "fight-or-flight" response, initially beneficial, but prolonged can negatively impact health.
• The HPA axis (Hypothalamus, Pituitary Gland, and Adrenal Cortex) is another stress response system, reacting more slowly.

Effects of stress (cont.)

• Elevated cortisol is linked to increased depression, and memory problems, and directly related to immune system impairment.
• Prolonged stress can cause illnesses, from colds and flu to cancer and cardiovascular disorders, by suppressing the immune system rendering the body vulnerable.
• Psychoneuroimmunology studies the interactions between psychological factors, nervous and endocrine systems, and the immune system.

The General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

• Hans Selye's GAS describes a generalized physiological response to severe stressors, with three phases:
  • Alarm reaction
  • Resistance phase
  • Exhaustion phase
• Prolonged stress leads to adaptation depletion, causing exhaustion, an increased susceptibility to disease, and even death.

Stress & Illness

• Cancer: caused by hereditary and environmental factors, including environmental factors such as cigarette smoke and asbestos; stress can lower the body's ability to detect and correct cancerous cell changes.
• Cardiovascular Disorders: illnesses affecting the heart muscle, often caused by blocked coronary arteries; risk factors include stress hormones, smoking, type A personality, obesity, high-fat diet, and lack of exercise.
• Personality Types: Type A personalities (competitive, ambitious, hostile) are more likely to have heart disease, while Type B personalities (laid-back, calm) are less susceptible. Approaches to modifying Type A behavior include the shotgun (changing all relevant behavior factors) and target behavior approach (emphasizing behaviors most likely to cause health damage).
• Psychological Hardiness: a resilient personality type (superior stress resistance) characterized by commitment to personal goals, control over life, and viewing change as a challenge.
• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): severe anxiety resulting from a life-threatening or extreme event, marked by flashbacks, nightmares, and impaired functioning.
• Gastric Ulcers: While most gastric ulcer patients have H. pylori bacteria, stress can create a compromising environment, making the stomach more vulnerable to bacterial attack.

Health Psychology

• Health psychology studies how biological, psychological, and social factors affect health and illness.
• Major health risks include smoking, alcohol and binge drinking, chronic pain.
• Smoking prevention involves educating the public on smoking harms and social pressures to smoke, while prevention for alcohol and binge drinking involves reducing or removing social reinforcers that encourage these habits. In relation to chronic pain, treatment includes behavior modification, biofeedback, and relaxation techniques to help patients cope.

Health and Stress Management

• Coping mechanisms are emotional-focused (changing perceptions of stressful situations) or problem-focused (directly managing the source of the stress).
• Problem-focused coping involves using problem-solving strategies to decrease or eliminate stressors.
• Emotion-focused coping involves altering one's emotional response to a stressful situation.
• Effective coping often involves combining both approaches.

Resources for Healthy Living

• Factors supporting healthy living involve health and exercise, positive beliefs, social skills, social support, material resources, personal control (internal locus vs. external locus), and relaxation techniques.