NAMEUNIVERSITY
Principle(s)
In his book Comprehensive stress management, J. S. Greenberg highlighted several different theories about what causes stress and its effects on illness and disease
(Greenberg, 2006).
Life- Events Theory was developed by Holmes and Rahe and this theory proposes
that stress occurs when a situation requires more resources than there are available. For
instance, if you are taking a test for which you are unprepared, you may have stress. Some scholars have made lists of main stressful events in people`s lives. The rationale is the following: the more of these events a person experiences, the greater is the stress.DeLongis and her co-workers support this general position, but they think that routine
stress is more important than major one that takes place seldom (Greenberg, 2006).
Another theory of how life events affect health is allostatic load, which was first
defined by McEwen. Allostatic load is based on the idea that there is a cumulative
physiological risk in having stressors of the psychosocial origin. Allostatic load proposes
that a key mediator of increasing risk for disease is the dysregulation of systems designed
adaptive physiological responses in regulatory systems, including the sympathetic and
parasympathetic nervous systems and the cardiovascular and immune systems. According to this theory, these systems of the organism get taxed and dysregulated when having stress that results in causing damage to tissues and major organ systems (Greenberg, 2006).
Hardiness Theory focuses not on the number of stressful events you experience
but on your attitude towards them. Kobasa and hercolleagues think that if you perceive
potentially stressful events as a challenge instead of as a threat, it will result in less stress.
Social Support Theory is supported by those experts, who think that stress
occurs when there is not enough social support available to respond to the event effectively e.g. emotional support, financial assistance, etc (Greenberg, 2006).
There are many other ways to conceptualize stress and its effects. Each, though,
consists of at least two component: a stressor and stress reactivity.
Implication(s)
On an almost daily basis, I observe examples of stress situations, which are faced by people surrounding every of us. Among them there are such social issues as loss of status, threats to self-esteem, work overload, or overcrowding. Some of them are in the highest point linked with health care, adding the most dangerous stressor – the fear of threat to our health.
Sometimes people come to the hospital with minor injuries, but having an immense stress, got as the result of the possibility to be injured. When people fall down the stairs, or are hit by car, or hurt themselves accidentally (having no serious injuries) they have a lot of stress, which results in increase of adrenalin, fast heart-beating, high perspiration, breathing changes and so on. When such experiences combine with social stress of being late for important meeting, losing bonus money, having an argument with the boss (because of being in the hospital and not at work), they cause a great deal of stress. The abovementioned stress experiences at work are the most common reason of stress in the U.S., according to the data, provided by American Psychological Association, which is given in the book Comprehensive stress management by J. S. Greenberg. According to it 75% of stress is because of money (Greenberg, 2006).
Personally I believe that such very situations are examples of stress events of Life-Events Theory as in such `money` situations stress occurs when we require more
resources (money, time, energy) than there are available. Results of such situations causing stress may be terrible (alcohol abuse, drug abuse, fighting) when stress happens on the regular basis and that is why it is important to avoid stress as much as possible.
References
Greenberg, J. S. (2006). Comprehensive stress management (9th ed.). McGraw Hill: New York.
