Health – UWS BA ePDPs

Stress Hardiness

There are many factors that can contribute to poor health. Upon reading the Pengilly & Dowd (2000) article on Stress Hardiness I discovered the main 5 factors that can negatively impact a person’s health: Normative and non-normative transitions, lack of social support, loneliness and lack of human contact. Firstly, normative life transitions which are major … Continue reading Stress Hardiness →

Inclusion and Diversity

On the 30 January we looked at Inclusion and Diversity. We looked at these concepts and what their definitions were. We looked at the different attitudes towards inclusion and diversity, the benefits of the inclusion and diversity and also the potential barriers to inclusion and how to overcome these barriers. I feel that I did learn a lot in this session. I learned about the different levels of inclusion and why it is very important. I felt that I managed to cope with the main concepts and issues that were discussed in this session. I feel though that I could look back on a couple of the concepts such as the Equality Act (2010) and be able to refine my knowledge on that act. I feel that my knowledge of these areas has increased as a result of this session however I feel that there is a couple of areas that I need to work on and in order to improve these areas I will look back on my notes and the lecture.

Prejudice and Ideology

On March 6th we looked at Prejudice and Ideology. I found this to be very interesting and I feel like I learned a lot today from the lecture, the independent task and the tutorial. I learned the difference between prejudice and discrimination. I learned what sub cultures are and the vast amount of groups that this covers. I learned simply what prejudice is and what Ideology involves. I feel that I do understand the main concepts from today as I was able to follow majority of what was being said and I was able to contribute a lot to the discussions we were having. I feel that I need to look back on certain areas today that I felt I didn’t fully understand like the term secularisation and just other terms I could do with knowing better. My knowledge as a result of today has improved greatly in the areas we discussed however I feel like I could do with bolstering my knowledge. What I have learned helped me understand how prejudice impacts on both micro and macro worlds. One example is that your family can impact on how you view things while considering the micro world. In terms of the macro world the media can influence our prejudices based on what they write.

Stress Hardiness

After our lecture on stress and the effects of stress, we were asked to read the Pengilly & Dowd (2000) article on Stress Hardiness. This article explained such a thing called the hardiness scale of commitment, challenge, and control on the relationship between stress and depression which allows us to research reasons into combatting this. The article discusses 4 main factors which can negatively impact your health;
– Normative life transitions.
– Non-normative life transitions.
– Lack of human contact or touch.
– Loneliness
– Lack of social support.

The first factor which can negatively impact your health is normative life transitions. Normative life transitions are life events that can be predicted or that you have planned – an example of this could be moving house or changing job. These type of events can cause a great deal of stress because they are life changing events however they are predicted and do not cause as much long term damage as non normative life transitions.

Another factor which can negatively impact your health are non normative life transitions. These life events are more damaging and have a more serious effect on someones life. These events are unpredictable and could be being fired from a job or a break up. Because of these life events, illnesses can become more occurrent – for example coronary heart disease and cancer.

Another factor that could negatively impact your health is loneliness. In our lecture, we learned the difference between loneliness and being alone. Being alone is literally being yourself in a room whereas feeling lonely means you could be in a room full of people and still feel yourself – this means you feel you cant talk to anyone. Lonely individuals are 4 times more likely to become sick and deal badly with stress. This can lead to unhealthy behaviours such as drinking and could also greatly contribute to illnesses such as depression.

One more factor that can impact your health is a lack of social support. Social support is the advice of your family, friends or colleagues about your life and them being there for you. If you feel you have nobody to talk to, then you will add more pressure onto yourself because you cant share it with someone else or get advice. This can be detrimental to ones health and can cause negative feelings about themselves which will effect their confidence, increase their stress levels, decrease their life expectancy, increase need for medical attention.

The last factor that can negatively impact your health is human contact or touch. Human contact is a necessity to a humans wellbeing and greatly contributes to ones mental health. From just giving your friend a high 5 or a hug, they are exposed to human emotion and get a sense of someone caring for them. This can help reduce stress levels and contribute to a healthier, happier life.

However, in todays lecture, we learned about ways to combat stress and avoid all of these problems which I am going to start implementing. One being exercising. When you exercise, your body releases endorphins which give you energy and make you happier. I’ve noticed this and will often go to the gym before I start studying. But now, I need to start going a run or to the gym when i feel stressed and often do not want to see or do anything. Another stress buffer is talking to people. This helps release stress and makes you feel safe which in turn, releases your stress levels. Ive found that this has helped me the most and not bottling all of my stress up means that I can in fact be more productive. Another stress buffer is religion. Religion gives individuals a sense of inclusion and can make individuals stop participating in at risk behaviours which contribute to stress.
I am going to start implementing these factors more and from the lecture and being educated more on stress, I know that I am now aware on how to cope with it.

Society and Lifestyles Week 6

Mind, Body and Health Holmes Rahe Inventory It was really interesting looking at this Holmes Rahe Inventory as it gave me an insight into my stress levels within the last year. The score I received was 183 which puts me in the 150-300 point category, this implies that I have about a 50% chance of … Continue reading Society and Lifestyles Week 6 →

Mind, Body and Health

Holmes Rahe Inventory

It was really interesting looking at this Holmes Rahe Inventory as it gave me an insight into my stress levels within the last year. The score I received was 183 which puts me in the 150-300 point category, this implies that I have about a 50% chance of a major health breakdown within the next 2 years. I know that I have had a lot of change within the last year however I did not realise that it could have such a major impact on my life in the next 2 years.

The scale is a really useful tool as it shows the level of stress in a person’s life and can determine what effects the stress you have experienced in the last year can have on your health and how you will be effected by it.

In the past year, I have left secondary school, started university, got a job and my grandpa was diagnosed with cancer (only to name a few things). As these stresses happened, I became very quiet and easily angered, these are traits which I am not prone to and so I knew and my family and peers knew something was happening. It has been a really challenging year for me however I believe that it has made me a better and stronger person as I am facing new hurdles which I am trying to overcome.

Overcoming my stress has been a gradual process as one thing happened after another and just as one thing was over another one came along. However, coping with them included a lot of crying, time to myself, and most importantly the support of my family and my peers. Without this support, I could not have coped the way I have done, they were there for me to talk to and share my worries and stresses with, and in return I have and will continue to support them as they have done with me. It was also good to have the support of my peers as they were in a similar position to myself and so we could talk about our worries together and support each other through these times.

Stress Hardiness

The “Hardiness and Social Support as Moderators of Stress” (Pengilly and Dowd, 2000) study conducted an investigation into the moderating effect of social support, hardiness, and the pieces of the hardiness scale of commitment, challenge, and control on the relationship between stress and depression. Hardiness is a person’s ability to bounce back from a situation – often known as resilience.

Factors which can have a negative impact on your health include: stress, loneliness, lack of social support, normative life transitions and non- normative life transitions.

Normative life events are things which people are expected to happen in their lives such as moving house or retiring. These events although predicted, can negatively affect a person’s life and cause them to stress temporarily however not cause a long-lasting effect.

On the contrary, non- normative life events are things which are unpredictable such as losing a job or getting a divorce. These life events can cause great stress on an individual and lead them to health problems such as coronary heart disease, cancer and other disorders.

Loneliness is another factor which can have a negative impact on your health. Loneliness is the feeling of having no support or having no one to talk to. Loneliness is often confused with being alone which is more of a physical sense where someone is sitting alone or is alone in their room. If a person is alone, they are not necessarily lonely as they could have chosen to be alone and know that they have support around them. Loneliness is a personal feeling and a have major health effects on a person’s life, they are more susceptible of having major depression and becoming ill as they have a diminished immune function. It can increase a person’s risk of becoming ill by 4 times the normal.

Lack of social support is another factor which has effect on a person’s health. Having social support is when people have others around them who they can talk to and lean on when they are struggling. It allows people to talk about their problems and gain guidance on their issues to try and resolve them in a time of crisis. However, if a person lacks this social support, they are going to physically find it harder to cope with their crisis, and take longer to recover from it as they have no one to get better for, they are only doing it for themselves as they have no support around them.

From this input, I have learned that there are many different methods that are used to try and combat these issues and support your own physical lifestyle. These can include exercise, because exercise releases endorphins to make you happier and less stressed. Finding someone who you can talk to as you can lean on them for support and talk through your worries with them, making you less lonely and isolated. Having a support network who can support you and you can support them – whether it is family or friends. A sense of touch is also proven to be beneficial for a person to have as it can lower blood pressure, decrease stress levels and reduce tension. It can be anything from a hug to a simple pat on the back. Also, trying to be optimistic can be beneficial as if you are being optimistic you are believing in yourself and are more likely to feel happy and this means your stress levels should increase and have a better outlook on different situations.

Health Part 1 – Society & Lifestyles

A Review of The Glasgow Effect I recently took a look at a study by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health as part of the Health input in the Society and Lifestyles module. The Glasgow Effect is a research study that analyses the mortality rates of Glasgow compared to Liverpool and Manchester, two cities that …

Continue reading “Health Part 1 – Society & Lifestyles”

Mind, Body and Health

In this weeks lecture we focused on stress to start off with. We had to identify the things that made us stressed, if they were good or bad and how we could help prevent them. We discussed stress triggers such as job stress, daily hassles and age related stress (this being something I had never thought …

Continue reading “Mind, Body and Health”

Our Perception of Health

Focusing on stress and our own perception of health was interesting. Personally I have never really thought about my own stress levels. I tend to put others before myself. As a student teacher it is vital that we understand that other people view things in a completely different way. How we see and feel things […]

Holmes Rahe Scale

After completing the Holmes Rahe scale I had a score of 108, which falls into the relatively low stress level category over the past year. However, I don’t think that this is an accurate score on a personal level as I feel that I have definitely very stressed this year with certain things ,mainly university work, body image and eating problems and personal relationship problems. I do find the tool useful, however I think that the tool is only useful if the questions relate to you and your personal circumstances, I feel that the scale doesn’t take into consideration, wider issues that may be relevant today or things that may relate to older or younger people. I know that my score would be much, much higher if the questions were related to my situation or there was a wider range of questions related to mental health problems or factors that are more prominent in our society today such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, work loads on different age groups etc.

I combat stress in different ways, sometimes I tackle it head on and sometimes I just crumble and cry. I mainly listen to music to combat stress, however, sometimes I like to go a walk or just take a break and watch some tv. I think that it also depends on the situation and how I’m feeling at the time as sometimes if its something that has really annoyed me I get very angry and snap at people which is not good and something I am trying to tackle to get rid of this emotional reaction or I try and just count to ten, If I am upset I try and count to ten or just like to be alone.

Mind, body and health

After reading the Pengilly & Dowd (2000) article on Stress Hardiness I have discovered more about what causes stress and also found a few ways from today’s lecture and inputs that would help combat stress. Firstly, 5 main … Continue reading →

Firstly, 5 main factors which can negatively impact our health are; loneliness, lack of social support, normative life transitions, lack of human touch/contact and major life events.

Loneliness is when we feel alone even when we are surrounded by many friends or are in a room full of people. Loneliness can cause major effects and negative impacts on our health, both mentally and physically as it can manifest itself into depression, faults in our immune system, unhealthy lifestyle choice, and can make you more susceptible to illnesses. Loneliness should not be confused with being alone as being alone is a choice and literally means being on your own with no one else with you.

Lack of social support can cause negative effects in our health as we may not have people to talk to about our stress and needs and so we may end up feeling negative about ourselves and our situation. We need a social support in order to feel loved and better about ourselves as we have the reassurance from someone else. A lack of social support may lead to lower life expectancy, longer recovery times from surgery, more need for medication in certain illnesses such as depression or medication for surgery etc.

Normative life situations can have a negative effect on our health as we may be thinking about certain life events that we worry about such as retirement or work, these may cause us stress and negativity but not as much as non-normative life situations (things that we cannot predict) for example, a death, divorce losing a job etc. These situations can have a huge impact on our health such as neurotic impairment, coronary heart disease, cancer and many more body related illnesses.

A lack of touch/human contact can have a negative impact on our health because we are not physically engaging with or touching people close to us which is important for expressing emotions and fulfilling emotional needs and comfort. The positive effects of human touch on our health are quite significant as our blood pressure lowers, our stress levels decrease and we have reduced tension. So we can clearly see why a person would need thus human contact and how they would benefit from it.

Major life events can cause negative impacts on the body as this is very similar to non normative life situations. These events are often unpredictable and can cause great stress to the body/mind, illnesses and overall poor health.

Ways to combat stress/negative impacts on our health.

Physical exercise

Finding ways to cope, such as counting to 10. Reading, walking etc.

Religion/ spirituality/ following certain beliefs

Finding support systems you can trust and talk to such as friends and family etc

Finding ways to gain control over certain situations, i.e- stressed about exams- make a study timetable.