Topic: Stress

Environmental Stresses

Environmental Stresses and its Effects

Environmental Stresses and its Psychosocial Effects

TITLE: ENVIRONMENTAL STRESSES AND THEIR PSYCHOSOCIAL EFFECTS

Thesis Statement:

The hyper exploitation of natural resources in conjunction with natural disasters provokes stress on the environment, which result in harmful psychosocial effects like social withdrawal and depression.

Guide Questions

1. What are the pressures that can cause environmental stress?

2. What are the natural events of the environment and how can these cause stress?

3. Are social withdrawal and depression the psychosocial effects of the mentioned environmental stressors? What are the symptoms of one being affected by these?

Topic Outline

ENVIRONMENTAL STRESSES AND THEIR PSYCHOSOCIAL EFFECTS

Thesis Statement:

The hyper exploitation of natural resources in conjunction with natural disasters provokes stress on the environment, which result in harmful psychosocial effects like social withdrawal and depression.

Introduction: Environmental Stress

Body:
I. Pressures on the environment A. Population B. Noise

II. Natural Events A. Natural Disasters III. Psychosocial Effects A. Social Withdrawal B. Depression

IV. Symptoms of Environmental Stress A. Headache B. Suicidal intentions C. Panic Attack D. Feeling of helplessness E. Change in one’s mood

Conclusion: knowing and understanding environmental stresses and their psychosocial effects.

Sentence Outline

ENVIRONMENTAL STRESSES AND THEIR PSYCHOSOCIAL EFFECTS

Thesis Statement:

The hyper exploitation of natural resources in conjunction with natural disasters provokes stress on the environment, which result in harmful psychosocial effects like social withdrawal and depression.

Introduction: Environmental stress is constraints or pressure on the environment. It is defined as the minor irritations and frustrations of everyday life that we all experience.

Body:
I. The following are the pressures on the environment. A. Overpopulation makes the environment crowded and stressful. B. Unpleasant or annoying noise does put pressure on the environment.

II. These are the natural events that cause environmental stress. A. Natural disaster is a major adverse event resulting from natural processes of the Earth and causes damage to the environment.

III. The two major psychosocial effects brought by environmental stresses are: A. Social withdrawal is avoiding people and activities you would usually enjoy; for some people, this can progress to a point of social isolation B. Depression is a mood state that goes well beyond temporarily feeling sad or blue. IV. The following are the signs and symptoms of environmental stress: A. The person feels aches and pains including stomach aches, headaches and muscle aches.
B. The person tends to commit suicide. C. The person experiences panic attacks.
D. The person feels helpless about himself.
E. The evident changes in the person’s mood including anger and sadness.

.
Conclusion: knowing and understanding environmental stresses and their psychosocial effects.

Paragraph Outline

ENVIRONMENTAL STRESSES AND ITS PSYCHOSOCIAL EFFECTS

Thesis Statement:

The hyper exploitation of natural resources in conjunction with natural disasters provokes stress on the environment, which result in harmful psychosocial effects like social withdrawal and depression.

Introduction: Environmental stress is constraints or pressure on the environment. Natural and/or human-directed causes can be the reasons.Itis defined as the minor irritations and frustrations of everyday life that everyone experience such as trying to get things done, amongst clutter and disorganization, being late for work or an appointment, and then getting caught in a traffic jam. In addition, environmental stress include such things as quality of the air breathed, the type of lighting that people have to work in, and the level of noise in the environment

Body:

I. Pressure on the environment caused by human activities such as generation of pollution or by natural events such as the occurrence of a drought can cause environmental stress to the people. There are many stresses on the environment, countless in fact, including crowding, temperature, noise, and many others. Although some of these stresses are out of humans’ control, many can and could be prevented. A. Overpopulation makes the environment crowded and stressful. Population growth and distribution have significant roles to play in the sustainability of the world's vast resources. Not only the number of people, but also the lifestyle, consumption patterns, and regions people inhabit and use directly affect the environment.Clearly one of the challenges of a growing population is that the mere presence of so many people sharing a limited number of resources strains the environment.

B. Unpleasant or annoying noise does put pressure on the environment. Noise is a difficult environmental stressor to investigate. What is an acceptable sound in one area may become impossible in another.

II. These are the natural events that can cause environmental stress. These will lead to psychological, emotional and social stress to people in everyday life.

A. Natural disaster is a major adverse event resulting from natural processes of the Earth. It can cause loss of life or property damage, and typically leaves some economic damage in its wake. Natural disasters can be especially traumatic for children and youth. Experiencing a dangerous or violent flood, storm, wildfire, or earthquake is frightening even for adults, and the devastation to the familiar environment can be long lasting and distressing

III. The two major psychosocial effects brought by environmental stresses are:

A. Social withdrawal is avoiding people and activities you would usually enjoy; for some people, this can progress to a point of social isolation. The person socially withdraws himself. It is the apparent reluctance to participate in normal interpersonal contacts of day to day life and retreat into one’s own comfort zone.

B. Depression is a mood state that goes well beyond temporarily feeling sad or blue. The person feels depressed. He/she is mentally disturbed, typically lacks energy, and difficulty in maintaining concentration or interest in life. It is a serious illness that affects one’s thoughts, feelings, behavior, mood, and physical health.

IV. The following are the signs and symptoms of a person experiencing environmental stress. These signs and symptoms will greatly help an individual to indicate if he is being affected by the stressor. A. The person is experiencing aches and pains. It includes stomach aches, headaches and muscle aches. This is mainly because of the body’s reaction to the stressors.

B. The most common trigger of stress is some kind of loss. The loss of, or change in a relationship, the loss of another person, or the loss of stability associated with change are some examples. That’s why a person tends to commit suicidal acts.

C. The person experiences panic attacks. Panic attack may cause the person to feel that their body is failing; it is in fact protecting itself from harm. The various symptoms of a panic attack can be understood as follows.

D. The person also feels helpless. He/she thinks that there is no one there for him/her. He/she does not have a source of strength.

E. The evident changes in the person’s mood including anger and sadness are indications of a sudden reaction to the stressors. Severe mood swings can affect a person. The effects are harsh and disruptive to one's life pattern.

Conclusion: Stress is not just a health problem or a psychological problem. In fact, it is likely that most illness has at least some stress related component. In the environment, there are many things that trigger stress. Knowing and understanding environmental stress and its psychosocial effects can make a person aware of its side effects and how will he able to handle and avoid this kind of stress that can cause social withdrawal and depression.
INTRODUCTION

Stress is the body's way of responding to inordinately negative environmental stimuli. It can be caused by both good and bad experiences. Also, it can affect both body and mind. It is not just a mere health problem or a psychological problem. In fact, it is likely that most illnesses have at least some stress-related component. There are many different things that can cause stress to people such as fatigue and work, survival, internal and environmental stress. This paper aims to discuss the hyper exploitation of natural resources in conjunction with natural disasters that provoke stress on the environment, which result in harmful psychosocial effects like social withdrawal and depression. Environmental stress is defined as the minor irritations and frustrations that people experience in everyday life. This is due to noise, overcrowding and pressure from work or family. Identifying these environmental stresses and learning to avoid and deal with them will help everyone to lower their level of stress. The psychosocial effects of environmental stress are depression and social withdrawal. Depression is a condition on mental disturbance, typically lack of energy and difficulty in maintaining concentration or interest in life and social withdrawal is the apparent reluctance to participate in normal interpersonal contacts of day to day life and retreat into one’s own comfort zone. The signs and symptoms of a person experiencing environmental stress are headaches, panic attacks, moodiness, the feeling of helplessness, and worst is suicidal intentions.It is an assurance to the readers that this paper will be able to give information and understanding of how the environment can cause stress psychologically and socially affect each and every individual.
BODY

The nature of environmental stress and the ways people cope with stressful environmental conditions represent an especially important and rapidly growing area of concern in environmental psychology. The social relevance of research on environmental stress is particularly apparent and it offers essential aid to humanize the urban environment and more effectively meet the needs of the elderly. Environmental stressors can exert powerful effects on the well-being, affecting physical health, interactions with other people, and sense of satisfaction and morale. Environmental stress has a big impact to people and it becomes one of the biggest causes of stress.
Inevery minute of every day, there are minor irritants and frustrations encountered that goes unnoticed because one just seem to live with it. These pressures on the environment tend people to eventually become stressful.
Two main pressures that provoke stress are population or overcrowding and noise.First is population, with the growing population all around the world. There seemed to have no space for everyone to walk or drive.“Overcrowding refers to thesituation in which more people are living within a single dwelling than there is space for,so that movement is restricted, privacy secluded, hygiene impossible, rest and sleep difficult (World Health Organization, 2011).”
Distribution and growth of population have important roles to play in thesustainability of nature’s vast resources. What directly affects the environment arelifestyle, patterns of consumption,the number of people and also the regions thathumans use and inhabit. Clearly one of the challenges of a growing population is thatthe mere presence of so many people sharing a limited number of resources strainstheenvironment and many people believe overpopulation is the root of crowding, poverty,violence and environmental degradation(Hines, 1973).
Crowding is frequently accompanied by negative effect including tension, anxiety, and stress. In streets, malls, jeepneys, and even in school, crowding is present. Often it is associated with impatience that leads to stress like for example when a person is in a crowded place, he tends to be unconsciously anxious. The thing with environmental stress is that it does not demand attention. Rather, it silently attacks the person involved.
A bigger population demands a large amount of food, water and shelter to people. If they do not have these kinds of necessities, people will suffer and become stressful in what is the right thing to do for them to able to continue and to cope with this kind of problems that they are facing.
Overpopulation brings a lot of problems to people ecologically and economically. The effects of overcrowding include; lack of enough food to feed people in a specificplace which could lead to death because of hunger. Overcrowding leads to environmental degradation because more people generate more waste. Solid wastes such as tin cans, plastics and bottles, when not properly disposed of, become eyesores in a place(Hines, 1973).
Sewage and garbage can pollute the water supply if left untreated. Poor environmental sanitation is also a major cause of diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and diarrhea. These can be solved by decreasing the number of children one gets with family planning and within a couple of years, over population will have gradually reduced.The effects on quality of life due to crowding may be due to children sharing a bed or bedroom, increased physical contact, lack of sleep, lack of privacy, poor hygiene practices and an inability to care adequately for sick household members.
The second pressure that can cause stress from the environment is noise. Anyone who has roomed with a noisy person, worked in a noisy office, or tried to study with a party going on in the neighbor’s house can attest to the effect of noise on one’s level of stress. Noise can also increase blood pressure, raise heart rate and can lead to tension of the muscles. Job dissatisfaction has been found to be related to noise and to result on anxiety and irritation.
One expert describes noise as the most troublesome of all the stressors on theenvironment. Most disturbing is noise that constantly changes pitch, intensity, orfrequency. People may become used to more common and stable noise and almostignore it. Those who live near airports, for example, seem to not even hear planes aftera while. However, just because one becomes accustomed to the noise or are able to tune it out does not mean he is not being affected by it. Noise ismeasured in decibels. At eighty five (85) decibels, stress response usually develops, and prolonged exposure above ninety (90) decibels can result in hearing damage. Of course dependingon one’s level ofconcentration and the task being performed, even low levels of noise can be bothersome. In spite of its potential stress, noise can at times be soothing. In fact, manystress management audio tapes; one will find noise to help him relax. This is called white noise and its purpose is to drown out other sounds that may affect relaxation.Sounds such as the surf rolling onto the shore, birds chirping o the wind rustling throughthe leaves can all serve as comforting sounds. Noise can be stressful but certain sounds can be relaxing. A personcan take greater control of his life by limitingdisturbing noises and seeking out relaxing sounds (Greenberg, 1999).
Noise is somewhat connected to the overpopulation.Ithas been shown that it causes systematic physiological reactions typically associated with stress, such as increased release of adrenaline in the body which leads to palpitations, anxiety, panic attacks, and elevated blood pressure. When there is a high length of exposure to intensified noise, it can cause a significant loss of hearing. A growing body of research evidence has shown that noise does have deleterious effects on social behavior. Noise has been found to lower social interaction. Also, it reduces helping behavior, and in some varied conditions to increase aggressioninterpersonally. There are some negative effects of noise especially on performancewhich becomes increasingly evident as the time of exposure is long, and someimportant performance decrements due to noise occur as after effects (Holahan,1982).Studies have shown that people are irritated by noise from traffic and aircraft, but that extensive irritation is found only in the areas where it is noisiest. Individual variation in annoyance is considerable, reflecting attitudes and fears toward the source of the noise as well as individual differences in sensitivity to noise.
Every day, noise is encountered in streets, office, and school, everywhere basically. It is very evident that noise causes much annoyance to people. When one encounters it almost every time, that person would experience stress. In work, especially in bi companies and corporations, employees usually talk to each other all the time because they are interdependent. That would occur almost every day.

Aside from those minor everyday stressful irritations and frustrations, there are also major events, although they do not occur every day, that could cause environmental stress and these are natural disasters.
There are different types of natural disasters that people can encounter like: landslide, wildfires, flood, tsunami, volcanic eruption and earthquake. First, landslide is a disaster involving elements of the ground, including rocks, trees, and parts of houses, and anything else which may happen to be swept up. Landslides can be caused by an earthquake, volcanic eruptions, or general instability in the surrounding land. Mudslides or mudflows are a special case of landslides, in which heavy rainfall causes loose soil on steep terrain to collapse and slide downwards. Second, wildfires or forest fires are uncontrolled fires burning in wild land areas. Common causes include lightning, human carelessness, arson, volcano eruption, and pyroclastic cloud from active volcano. Third, flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land, a deluge. It is usually due to the volume of water within a body of water, such as a river or lake, exceeding the total capacity of the body, and as a result some of the water flows or sits outside of the normal perimeter of the body. Fourth, tsunami is a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. Fifth, earthquakes are mass movements above or below water, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions, landslides, large meteorite impacts comet impacts and testing with nuclear weapons at sea all have the potential to generate a tsunami.And lastly,volcanic eruption is the point in which a volcano is active and releases lava and poisonous gasses in to the air. They range from daily small eruptions to extremely infrequent super volcano eruptions (where the volcano expels at least 1,000 cubic kilometers of material) (Ravyn,2007).
Natural disaster is a major unfavorable event resulting from Earth’s natural processes. Property damage can be caused by these extreme natural disasters and would basically leave some damage in the economy as well. Natural disasters can cause trauma to whoever has undergone its tragedy. It distresses him and has a long lasting effect in the devastation to the familiar environment. The aftereffect in experiencing these earthquakes, wildfires, or violent floods can stress him and would lead to mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion and burnout. There are some people who can definitely cope with these easily, considering their place to be where natural disasters frequently occur but others who have just experienced it may be in a state of shock and it is hard for them to manage but eventually, they will recover and heal and would be able to rebuild their lives.
Natural disasters strike suddenly and leave behind lives shattered by physical injury or the loss of home and job. According to Dr. Lystad (2003), there are six initialresponses after the cause of natural disaster: fear, confusion and difficulty in makingdecisions, desire for information, oneself and family, and helpfulness to others. This means that people are feeling down and helpless on what they should do to prevent this kind of tragedy and be able to prepare themselves in times of calamities. Last 2009, Typhoon Sendong attacked the Philippines especially in Cagayan de Oro, where the inhabitants did not expect that kind of tragedy to happen in their city. The people are traumatized even just little rain will pour. They are scared that it will happen again and the most affected of this situation are the children. Many lost their families and properties. It is hard for the people to adjust from this scenario of losing someone they love and be able to stand up again.
Therefore, natural disasters can make the lives of the people miserable with just one click and it is all gone. People should be vigilant and be prepared when it comes to these circumstances so that no more lives and belongings will vanish (Abbott, 1996).
Eventually,these environmental stressors affect mostly everyone for people live with the environment. They are being affected psychosocially and two main psychosocial effects are brought up from these stressors namely depression and social withdrawal.
“That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as he sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it is impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key” (Wurtzel, 2004.)
This means that depression is a secret attacker. It strikes down deep someone’s life. The person may not know he is depressed but it is there, silently making him ill; mentally ill. He does not know if his depression has started nor will he know when it will end. The downside of this is that it has the biggest possibility of someone to take his own life which is called suicide. Many factors contribute to one being depressed and some of these arepressures from the environment like population and the noise surrounding him.
Depression is a complex condition characterized by profound blues, fatigue,feelings of insignificance, and a loss of interest in social activities. Depression causesfeelings of persistent sadness and emptiness. They may feel varying degrees ofworthlessness, guilt over things they have or have not done in the past, and self-dislike.They often feel hopeless about the future and helpless to bring about change in their lives (Mangan, 2009). Depression is also a medical illness that is a big factor in contributing to someone’spersistent feeling of sadness and absence of interest. Depression has a great impact on the emotions of the person, his behavior and how he thinks. Natural events that cause environmental stress usually lead to this psychosocial effect which is depression. Psychologically, depression affects the mental aspect. The mind is diverted to think pessimistically, depleting the positive thinking. This affects the decision-making of the person that makes him unable to stick to his decisions. Individuals who are socially depressed display different social responses which depend on the situation or the variable of the social role. One could expect that relations in the real-world are portrayed by unlikely behavior, emotional problem, mixed messages, etc. As severe as its case is, depression is a highly treatable illness. The earlier the treatment, the more likely it is that recurrence is prevented. One thing that can alleviate against depression is the reason itself, the environment, specifically the social environment. Positive relationships with others help one become happy. There is a thing called “social support” that makes avital difference in one’s psychological well-being, not only by providing practical help when one has a problem, but also by offering emotional support.
Depression is a therapeutic disease that reasons a constant emotion of sadnessand loss of interest and it causes physical symptoms. It affects how one feels, thinks and behaves. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. One may havetrouble doing normal day-to-day activities. Depression can also make one feel as if life is not worth living. It is not just something that one can simply snap out of. It is morethan just a bout of the blues. It usually requires long-term treatment but it should not be discouraged because most people with depression feel better with psychologicalcounseling, medication or other treatment (Mayo, 2012). Another psychosocial effect is social withdrawal. “Think about what it would be like to spend most of the time alone because being around other people is just too difficult. A person feels that others are judging him for his mental illness, and so he is scared to face the world. He withdraws to avoid this stigmatization. This social withdrawal is emotionally very costly. But this is a two-way street — the mentally ill withdraw from society–society withdraws from them (Stobbe, 2006).”
Belonging is very important. Relating with persons, places, or things can help one to belong and interact with the environment. The complete opposite of belongingness is social isolation. One is socially isolated when he or she does not connect or belong to a group. One is apart or is distant from a cluster having no friends or support group. One of the reasons of this is the environmental pressures. One withdraws or isolates himself because of overcrowding and noise. He does not prefer to interact with other people because he feels crowded which connects to noise and that person could be annoyed. In work, one cannot concentrate because of too much people and too much noise that could result to him being isolated or he chooses to withdraw himself from the group of workers in order for him to concentrate on his task. Another reason why one withdraws himself is because of the natural events like natural disasters.
For example, a person experiences the loss of loved one because of a flood. That person becomes depressed, and does want to go to school anymore and just need to be alone because he feels lonely. Tendency is that he withdraws himself from others because he does not want to be seen crying or he does not want to feel being pitied. In line with these effects, signs and symptoms give a hint on whether someone does have environmental stress. The person have headaches, panic attacks, moodiness, the feeling of helplessness, and worst is suicidal intentions.
The person is experiencing aches and pains. It includes stomach aches, headaches and muscle aches. This is mainly because of the body’s reaction to the stressors. Headaches may be caused by muscle tension accompanying stress. Thismuscle tension includes the forehead, jaw, or neck. The treatment of headaches may include meditation (aspirin or a tranquilizer), heat on tense muscles and massage (Greenberg, 1999).This state clearly how big an impact stresses of the environment are to a person. The person experiences panic attacks. A panic attack is a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause (Goodman, 2012). Panic attacks can be very frightening. When panic attacks occur, the first thing that a person may experience is losing control which will then cause heart attack or even death. Also, panic attacks may cause the person to feel that their body is failing; it is in fact protecting itself from harm. Panic attack is a symptom of anxiety disorder. These are sudden feeling of terror that attacks the person without warning. The person feels like having a heart attack or death, It is like when a person is in a crowded place, he tends to have an irrational fear or phobia about the people around that place and they begin to avoid it. “Mood swings can cause a normal, reasonable person to become irritable and difficult to be around. While this can be a problem for others, it pales in comparison to the instability the person experiences. No one wants to be so unpredictable, but for many it is a way of life (Woodard, 2004).”The evident changes in the person’s mood including anger and sadness are indications of a sudden reaction to the stressors. Severe mood swings can affect a person. The effects are harsh and disruptive to one's life pattern. They get easily irritated to other people and it can cause conflict to both parties. The person also feels helpless. This feeling is basically due to inability to change something in the person’s life that may be somewhat important. He/she thinks that there is no one there for him/her. Helplessness is one major cause of depression since depression in many cases can be nothing more than a feeling someone gets when he loses hope in getting something that he/she really wanted. He/she does not have a source of strength and courage to go on with his/her life.The feeling of loneliness is like when no one would have the eagerness to listen and in some way help the person on what they really feel inside.
“Just like an electric current flows in a circuit, motivation flows in our minds as long as the circuit is connected but when the wire is torn the current stops flawing and we lose motivation(Radwan, 2009).”This quotation is directly related to the self which is basically a reminder that it will continue to function well if it is fully active. Moreover, it will continue on being progressive if it has the motivation it needs in order to go on. This wire becomes torn when we feel helpless or when we think that we are not in control of the circumstances. One of the most significant definitions of helplessness is the lack of control over someone’s life. This could be a greater factor that can trigger stress if not understood fully.
The worst of the symptoms of one being environmentally stressed is suicidal intentions. Suicide is the act of intentionally killing oneself. There are reasons why people commit suicide like they are depressed, psychotic, impulsive, crying out for help. They have a philosophical desire to die when they have made a mistake. The most common trigger for this symptom is being depressed caused by the loss of someone maybe in an accident or tragedies such as the natural disasters.

CONCLUSION

People experience stress from the moment they woke up. They also do not notice that simple things may cause stress to them like overcrowding, noise, and air pollution that they encounter every day and they are not aware of it. This hyper exploitation of natural resources in conjunction with natural disasters provokes stress on the environment. This results in harmful psychosocial effects like social withdrawal and depression. Stress is not just a health problem or a psychological problem. In fact, it is likely that most illness have at least some stress related component. In the environment, there are many things that trigger stress. Knowing and understanding environmental stress and its psychosocial effects can make persons aware of its side effects and how they will be able to handle and avoid this kind of stress that can cause social withdrawal and depression.Good organizational and prioritization skills aid in diminishing environmental stress. Adapting to stressful situations by changing one's expectations and attitudes is a big help as well. Accepting situations that cannot change helps one to cope with stress while making time for oneself to have fun helps in forgetting personal problems and induces relaxation.
People may encounter stress every time, but they can avoid this if they have these ideas and awareness on how and what to do if these things happen to them. Also, by having a positive outlook in life can help them to forget all the difficulties that they are facing that can give stress to them.
REFERENCE LIST

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Hines, L.G. (1973). Environmental issues population, pollution and economics. W.W. Norton and Company, Inc.
Holahan, C.J. (1982). Environmental psychology. New York: Random House.

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