...November 2015 The Effects That Stress Has On Health Stress is a word that constantly gets tossed around with different meanings and connotations. Many people do not realize what a significant effect that it can have on people and their families. Merriam-Webster defines stress as a state of mental tension and worry caused by problems in your life, work, etc. The denotation of stress can also be stated as something that causes strong feelings of worry or anxiety. In a medical or biological context, stress is a physical, mental, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension (medicinenet.com). It does not just interfere with your daily life; it causes many health problems. Stress can be as acute or as minute as the patient allows it to be but despite the assumptions, stress is a terrible disease that can affect the health of many including altered brain function, internal organ issues, and mental instability. There are many different causes of stress depending on the type of person the patient may be. Money, the economy, work, relationships, and responsibilities are all recorded factors known to cause stress. Stress can be caused by a deadline you have to meet at work or even the concern of pleasing your spouses or relatives. Workplace stress can affect your ability to apply and keep jobs or appease your boss. According to a survey from the American Psychological Association, more than one third of American workers experience chronic work stress (helpguide.org). School can...
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...Running head: OCCUPATIONAL STRESS AFFECTS MENTAL HEALTH How occupational stress affects mental health Dayana Fornaris Florida National College April 15, 2011 Abstract This research paper gives us a brief idea about how occupational stress affects mental health. It describes how occupational stress has become a serious health issue, not just in terms of an individual’s mental and physical well being, but also for employers as well who had begin to feel the financial consequences of work stress. Occupational stress can be defined as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities of the worker. However, occupational stress can be an extremely difficult construct to define. There are certain factors that contribute to work stress like for example working long hours beyond your control; Finding it hard to say no to a task for fear of losing future work, frustration and feeling undervalued at work. This can lead to stress and tension. How occupational stress affects mental health Stress has been defined in a number of ways and the range of stress management techniques is even wider still. Essentially what most people understand by 'stress' is a physiological or psychological response to external stressors that goes beyond what is accepted as normal. Maybe 'strain' would have been a better word. Limited external stresses produce a response, a 'strain’, which...
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...The purpose of this essay is to discuss the influences of parenting on children’s mental health; with a particular focus, on the role played by parent’s attachment styles, in cohesion with the parent’s physical and psychological health. The essay will further highlight an existence of additional complex factors, above and above parenting, that affect children’s mental health, varying from, social, environmental, cultural, stigma and poverty effects. Mental health can described as state of emotional and psychological well-being in which an individual is able to use his or her cognitive and emotional capabilities, function in society and meet the ordinary demands of everyday life. Research outlines that, a child mental well being is thought to depend a combination of factors such healthy and balanced nutrition, socialization, and nurturing, provided by primary caregivers, extended family, and the community of residence, a potential impact to which, the child development process can proceeds along a healthy, or potentially traumatic trajectory (Gardner, & Gunn, 2012). From a social and nurturing perspective, the attachment theory supports the above notion, by stating that the quality of mother-child (or primary caregiver) attachment, is regarded as a pervasive factor in the development of an individual’s relational psychology throughout the entire lifespan (Bowlby, 1982; Freud, 1932). Attachment theory evolves from a basic premise that attachment behaviours are part of...
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...Mental health is a person’s condition with regard to their emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Basically meaning that it affects how we think, feel, and act. For example, it helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood to adolescence through adulthood. In relation, emotional intelligence is a concept developed by Daniel Goleman, and it means the ability to identify, use, understand, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, and overcome challenges. This ability is important to being mentally healthy because uncontrolled emotions and stress impacts your mental health, making you vulnerable to anxiety and depression. If you are unable to understand, be comfortable with, and manage your emotions, you’ll be at risk of being unable to form strong relationships, which can leave you feeling lonely and isolated. Mental disorder is a pattern of behavior in an individual that is associated with distress or disability in an important area of functioning or with significantly increased risk of suffering, death, pain, or disability. One of the common cause of mental disorders are by complex interactions of biological factors, such as neurotransmitter levels. Neurotransmitters are the vehicle by which messages travel from one nerve cell to another in the brain. They affect mood, memory, and our ability to concentrate...
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... INTRODUCTION In 2002 WHO, World Health Organization estimated 877,000 people die by suicide every year, 154 million people suffering from depression and 25 million people from schizophrenia; 91 million people are affected by alcohol use disorders and 15 million by drug use disorders. A recently published WHO report shows that 50 million people suffer from epilepsy and 24 million from Alzheimer and other dementias1. Mental health and associated diseases/disorders is a worldwide concern as it can affect any human being. Mental health has no regard for race, gender, age, country or any classification that seeks to separate. WHAT IS EMOTIONAL FITNESS? According to Warren Redman, writer of the book The 9 Steps to Emotional Fitness: A Tool-Kit for Life in the 21st Century emotional fitness entails choosing your reactions to people and situations, coping with pressure in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling stress, freeing yourself from addictive behaviours, feeling OK even when things go wrong, expressing yourself honestly without needing to put anyone down, being authentic without worrying about how others sees you, trusting yourself without judging others, asking for what without being attached to the outcome, listening to others without getting in the way, understanding and accepting yourself fully and living your life right now the way you want it1. FACTORS AFFECTING EMOTIONAL FITNESS Biological Biological factors vary among mental illness, but often include genetic predisposition...
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...The purpose of this essay is to analyse the article ‘Government will fail to meet five out of six closing the gap targets’ (Brennan 2015) and identifies the different social determinants of health in the article provided. The article examines holistic implications on the Australian Indigenous community in comparison to non-indigenous communities. The world health organisation defines social health of determinants as factors that affect the individual social, economic, mental and political aspects of their lives among many other factors (World Health Organisation 2015). A large percentage of the social determinants listed by the World Health Organisation affect the indigenous community in Australia in many of their current circumstances. This...
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...The Effect of Acute and Chronic Exercise on Stress, Anxiety, and Depression March 8, 2015 Abstract Mental health is a severe problem in our society today, approximately 61.5 million of the Americans experience mental illness in each given year (NAMI, 2013). The main goal of this paper is to provide answers on how physical activity can replace anti-anxiety and depression drugs. To solve this question numerous research articles were examined by looking at how both acute and chronic bouts of aerobic and anaerobic exercise correlated with mental health aspects such as stress, depression, and anxiety. The findings showed that almost all types of exercise showed the capability of being able to improve mental health significantly. Thus, it is possible for physical activity to become a replacement for drugs being administered to the general population today, which allows people to treat their mental illness without the adverse side effects, which accompany drugs. This is supported by multiple studies done that compared physical exercise and drugs as treatments for mental disorders. All the studies support the claim that physical activity could be used as a replacement for drugs in treating mental illness. Introduction Mental health illness is a severe issue affecting a significant portion of Americans every day. Serious mental illnesses have been reported to cost America $193.2 Billion in lost earning per year (NAMI, 2013). Specifically, 14.8 million people...
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...The Effect of Acute and Chronic Exercise on Stress, Anxiety, and Depression March 8, 2015 Abstract Mental health is a severe problem in our society today, approximately 61.5 million of the Americans experience mental illness in each given year (NAMI, 2013). The main goal of this paper is to provide answers on how physical activity can replace anti-anxiety and depression drugs. To solve this question numerous research articles were examined by looking at how both acute and chronic bouts of aerobic and anaerobic exercise correlated with mental health aspects such as stress, depression, and anxiety. The findings showed that almost all types of exercise showed the capability of being able to improve mental health significantly. Thus, it is possible for physical activity to become a replacement for drugs being administered to the general population today, which allows people to treat their mental illness without the adverse side effects, which accompany drugs. This is supported by multiple studies done that compared physical exercise and drugs as treatments for mental disorders. All the studies support the claim that physical activity could be used as a replacement for drugs in treating mental illness. Introduction Mental health illness is a severe issue affecting a significant portion of Americans every day. Serious mental illnesses have been reported to cost America $193.2 Billion in lost earning per year (NAMI, 2013). Specifically, 14.8 million people are reported to...
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...The Effects of Stress in the Military: How Soldiers are Being Better Prepared TJ Bethel College Author Note This paper was prepared for Psychology 182 and English 101, taught by Dr. Carlson and Dr. Davis. Also, for the use as an example writing for Tj. Abstract Those who risk their lives every day are bound to be under stress. From performance-based consequences such as marksmanship, firing rate, and positioning to the physiological and psychological aftermath of war-induced stress, members of the militaries around the world have suffered. With ever-changing war strategies, soldiers face foreign stressors that can only be found on the battlefield. It is now a priority to address the natural responses to these stressors by conditioning the soldiers to improve and alleviate stress’s consequences for soldiers worldwide. Stress management and coping mechanisms that are being designed now will improve soldiers’ military careers. The Effects of Stress in the Military and its Consequences: How Soldiers are Being Better Prepared Stress is inevitable. Stress is found in children struggling to make friends, in teens coping with peer pressure, and in adults providing for their families. It can be present in the life of any individual. Military personnel are no exception to this. For military personnel, risking their lives is what they do. Stress affects members of all armed forces in many ways. Immediate, short-term effects as well as lasting, long-term effects have been...
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...Physical and Mental Health and Stress Levels And How Might These Skills Relate to Academic and Personal Success Billy J. Houston GEN 200 01/11/2014 FRANCIS JONES It is important to manage our physical and mental health and stress levels because physical health is directly related to mental health and both of which can be affected by high stress levels causing both physical and mental illnesses to develop. The physical health of a person can affect a person's mental abilities resulting in higher stress level. The bottom line is that stress can kill, as I have learned to be true in my own life experiences, as my father passed away from a massive heart attack at the age of 46 years old. How his physical life contributed to his development of stress related maladies is clear as my father was an alcoholic, a smoker, and also a diabetic who never took his conditions or his medications very seriously until it was too late and he was taken from us. He did manage to participate in several activities which reduced his stress somewhat such as fishing, bowling, and playing baseball with his children, but because he had the contributing factors already in place, due to hereditary traits for diabetes and heart disease it would have been much better for him if he did not drink or smoke. As a result of his early death none of his six children drink at all and only one of them smokes and is in the process of quitting. Another reason it is important to manage our physical and mental health...
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...How can a small mental illness such as stress, depression, and anxiety affect your unborn child? Stress depression and anxiety during pregnancy can greatly affect how the child develops cognitively and can increase their chances of mental illnesses later on in life. The average women in 2015 reported a stress level of 5.3 out of 10.(apa 2015)18.1% of adults 18 and older in the United States are suffering from anxiety. 8.2% of adults in the US are suffering from either major depressive disorder or persistent depressive disorder.(adaa facts and stats) If a mother is in the top 15% in the population for depression and anxiety symptoms, the risk of the child having behavioral and emotional problems doubles.(Glover 2015). It is becoming apparent that research is showing patterns between the infant in the womb/after birth and stress, anxiety, and depression....
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...Stress is something that everyone in the world goes through at some point in life. When looking at the definition on stress it states that stress is the mental and physical response and adaptation to ones bodies to the real or perceived changes and challenges in one’s life. Stress also affects our emotions and how we feel about certain situations. One’s health can majorly be affected by stress. When looking how stress can affect one’s health it has some positive and negative effects. The positive of how stress can affect our health is that it can drive us to want to do better at the task that we have at hand. Stress can be seen as a cognitive enhancer. One way that stress can be a cognitive enhancer is that it can help one focus. One such...
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...Dangers of stress Stress Puts You in Danger Dina Haidar Global University Stress Puts You in Danger Stress is like spice - in the right proportion it enhances the flavor of a dish. Too little produces a bland, dull meal; too much may choke you" Donald Tubesing (Madison, 2011). Walter Cannon have found out during the year 1940 that stress triggers the fight-or-flight reaction which is positive mainly because it is designed to save our lives. And he described it as “an emergency reaction that prepares an animal for running or fighting” (Tennant, 2005). Under stress circumstances your heart pounds faster, blood pressure rises, breath quickens ,your senses becomes sharper. These reactions increases your stamina, speeds your reaction, and enhance your focus preparing you to either fight or flee (Tennant, john hopkins university schools of education, 2005) .it is optimistic when a person feels stimulated and able to manage the situation, handle emergencies meet challenges and excel. (Tennant, 2005) But there is no doubt that the negative effects dominates over the positives. . Stress is often related to deleterious physiological complications, It corrupts almost every system in the human body (Melinda Smith, 2012).A recent study has shown that 80% of the most commonly prescripted medicines in the U.S. are those of relates to stress illnesses (institute, 2009) .Everyone experience stress, and stress in all...
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...Current Event Mental health has always been surrounded by stigma, and the first step in treating the illness is to treat society’s perception of the illness. The news article that was chosen for analysis is about the province of Ontario offering mental health support for workers of high-risk occupations. The article states that mental health illnesses account for approximately 30 percent of disability claims, an issue that Ontario seeks to support (Traber 2014). The province of Ontario launched the Roundtable on Traumatic Mental Stress in 2012 to help encourage healthy work environments, which brought together representatives of many professions, including nursing (Traber 2014). It is known that nursing is a profession that can be physically...
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