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 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.