Stress, Health, and Human Flourishing

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Chapter 11

• Stress, Health, and Human Flourishing

• PowerPoint Presentation
• by Jim Foley

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Health Psychology

• the phases of stress response and adaptation
• how stress and health are affected by
• appraisal of stressors
• severity of stressors
• personality types
• perceived control
• emotion or problem focus
• optimism
• social support
• exercise
• relaxation
• religious faith and participation

• Emotions, as well as personality, attitudes,
  behaviors, and responses to stress, can have an
  impact on our overall health.
• Health psychology studies these impacts, as part
  of the broader field of behavioral medicine.
• Topics of study in health psychology include

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Stress A Focus of Health Psychology

• Many people report being affected by stress.
• Some terms psychologists use to talk about
  stress

Stress refers to the process of appraising and
responding to events which we consider
threatening or challenging.

• a stressor is an event or condition which we view
  as threatening, challenging, or overwhelming.
• Examples include poverty, an explosion, a
  psychology test, feeling cold, being in a plane,
  and loud noises.
• appraisal refers to deciding whether to view
  something as a stressor.
• stress reaction refers to any emotional and
  physical responses to the stressor such as rapid
  heartbeat, elevated cortisol levels, and crying.

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Clarifying the Components of Stress

• Stress isnt something that happens to you its
  a process in which you participate.
• The process includes the stressor (event or
  condition), cognitive appraisal, body response,
  and coping strategies.
• The advantage of breaking stress into these
  components is that we can see options for
  altering each of these different factors.

What could this person do to reduce his level of
suffering from stress?
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AppraisalChoosing How to View a Situation

• Questions to ask yourself when facing a possible
  stressor
• Is this a challenge, and will I tackle it?
• Is it overwhelming, and will I give up?

• There are few conditions that are inherently and
  universally stressful we can often choose our
  appraisal and our responses.
• extreme, chronic physical threats or challenges
  (such as noise or starvation)

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Beneficial and Harmful Stress Effects

• A brief experience of stress can be beneficial
• improving immune system response
• motivating action
• focusing priorities
• feeling engaged, energized, and satisfied
• providing challenges that encourage growth,
  knowledge, and self-esteem
• Extreme or prolonged stress, causes problems
• mental and physical coping systems become
  overwhelmed and defeated rather than strengthened
• immune functioning and other health factors
  decline because of damage

The key factor is whether there is a chance for
recovery and healing.
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Stressors

• Stressors refer to the events and conditions that
  trigger our stress response, because they are
  perceived/ appraised as overwhelmingly
  challenging, threatening, and/or harmful.

• There may be a spectrum of levels of intensity
  and persistence of stressors.
• We can also see stressors as falling into one of
  four categories
• catastrophes.
• significant life changes.
• chronic daily hassles.

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Catastrophic Events/Conditions

• Short-term effects include increased heart
  attacks on the day of the event.
• Long term effects include depression, nightmares,
  anxiety, and flashbacks.
• Bonding both the trauma and the recovery are
  shared with others.

• Appraisal is not essential in a catastrophic
  event. Most people agree that the event is
  harmful and overwhelming.
• Examples include earthquakes, floods, hurricanes,
  war/combat, and wildfires.
• It can be one single event or chronic harmful
  conditions.

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Major Life Events/Changes

• Even supposedly happy life changes, such as
  marriage, starting college or a new job, or the
  birth or adoption of a child, can bring increased
  challenge and stress.
• Change is often challenging.
• New roles, new priorities, and new tasks can put
  a strain on our coping resources.
• The challenge, and the negative impact on health,
  increases when
• the changes are painful, such as a death in
  family, loss of job, or heart attack.
• the changes are in a cluster, and there are too
  many at once.

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Chronic Daily Difficulties

• Daily difficulties can be caused by facing too
  many tasks, too little time, and too little
  control.

• Daily difficulties can be caused by the lack of
  social power and freedom
• being bullied
• living in poverty
• living under oppressive political conditions

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The Bodys Stress Response System

• When encountering a sudden trauma or other
  stressor, our body acts to increase our
  resistance to threat and harm.

Phase 1 The fight or flight sympathetic
nervous system responds, reducing pain and
increasing the heart rate. The core of the
adrenal glands produces norepinephrine and
epinephrine (adrenaline). This system, identified
by Walter Cannon (1871-1945), gives us energy to
act.
Phase 2 The brain sends signals to the outer
part of the adrenal glands to produce cortisol
and other stress hormones. These focus us on
planning adaptive coping strategies and resisting
defeat by the stressor. Hans Selye (1907-1982)
indentified this extended resistance phase of
the stress response, followed by
Phase 3 Exhaustion.
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Effects of Prolonged Stress

• Repeated and prolonged stress, with too much
  Phase 3 time, leads to various signs of physical
  deterioration and premature aging
• the production of new neurons declines
• neural circuits in the brain break down
• DNA telomeres (chromosome tips) shorten, ? cells
  lose ability to divide, ? cells die, ? tissue
  stops regenerating, ? early aging and death

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Female and Male Stress Response

• In response to a stressor such as the death of a
  loved one, women may tend and befriend nurture
  themselves and others, and bond together.
• The bonding hormone oxytocin may play a role in
  this bonding.
• Women show behavioral and neurological signs of
  becoming more empathetic under stress.

• Men under stress are more likely to socially
  withdraw and numb themselves with alcohol.
• Men are also more likely to become aggressive
  under stress.
• In either case, mens behavior and brains show
  LESS empathy and less tuning in to others under
  stress.

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Studying the Stress-Illness Relationship

• How does stress increase our risk of disease?
• This is the subject of a new field of study
  psychoneuroimmunology, the study of how
  interacting psychological, neural, and endocrine
  processes affect health.
• Psychologists no longer use the term
  psychosomatic because it has come to mean an
  imagined illness.
• We now refer to psychophysiological illness, a
  real illness caused in part by psychological
  factors such as the experience of stress.

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Stress Increases The Risk of Illness

• Here we see psycho-neuroimmunology in action
• psychological factors, such as appraisal,
  thoughts, and feelings.
• neurological factors, such as brain signals
  engaging the stress response system.
• immunology, such as stress hormone exposure which
  suppresses the immune system.

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Stress and Heart Disease

• Many factors contribute to heart disease.
• Biological genetic predisposition to high blood
  pressure and high cholesterol
• Behavioral smoking, inactivity, and high-fat
  diet
• Psychological chronic stress, and personality
  styles that worsen the experience of stress

• In coronary heart/artery disease, the blood
  vessels that provide oxygen and nutrients to the
  heart muscle itself become clogged, narrowed, and
  closed.

Clogging of the coronary artery
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Type A Personality?Stress?Heart Disease

• People with a type A personality are impatient,
  verbally aggressive, and always pushing
  themselves and others to achieve.
• People with a type B personality are more relaxed
  and go with the flow.
• In one study, heart attacks ONLY struck people
  with Type A traits.
• Accomplishing goals is healthy, but a compulsion
  to always be working, with little time spent
  smelling the flowers, is not.

• Also a problem ANGER.
• To reduce anger-related stress defuse anger with
  exercise, talking, forgiveness, NOT letting it
  out (catharsis) by screaming, punching.

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Pessimism and Heart Disease

• It can be helpful to realistically anticipate
  negative events that may happen, and to plan how
  to prevent or cope with them.

Pessimism refers to the assumption that negative
outcomes will happen, and often facing them by
complaining and/or giving up.

• Men who are generally pessimistic are more likely
  to develop heart disease within ten years than
  optimists.

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Depression and Heart Disease

• Why does depression appear so often with heart
  disease? Does one cause the other?
• One possible answer is that the two problems are
  both caused by chronic stress.
• There may be an intervening variable excessive
  inflammation.

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Health Consequences of Chronic Stress The
Repeated Release of Stress Hormones

• The stress hormone cortisol helps our bodies
  respond to brief stress.
• Chronically high cortisol levels damage the body.

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Promoting Health

• Ways that help some people to reduce levels of
  stress, and to improve health
• aerobic exercise
• relaxation and meditation
• participation in communities of faith
• alternative medicine

• Some ways to reduce the health effects of stress
  include
• address the stressors.
• soothe emotions.
• increase ones sense of control over stressors.
• exchange optimism for pessimism.
• get social support.

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Coping with Stress
Emotion-focused coping means reducing the
emotional impact of stress by getting support,
comfort, and perspective from others.
Problem-focused coping means reducing the
stressors, such as by working out a conflict, or
tackling a difficult project.

• Risk ignoring the problem.
• We might focus on this style of coping when we
  perceive the stressor as something we cannot
  change.

• Risk magnifying emotional distress, especially
  if trying to change something thats difficult to
  change (e.g. another persons traits).

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Learned Helplessness vs. Personal Control
Normally, most creatures try to escape or end a
painful situation. But experience can make us
lose hope.

• Experiment by Martin Seligman Give a dog no
  chance of escape from repeated shocks.
• Result It will give up on trying to escape pain,
  even when it later has the option to do so.

• Learned Helplessness Declining to help oneself
  after repeated attempts to do so have failed.

Personal Control When people are given some
choices (not too many), they thrive.
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External vs. Internal Locus of Control
Locus of control Our perception of where the
seat of power over our lives is located.

• External locus of control we picture that a
  force outside of ourselves controls our fate.

Internal locus of control we feel that we are in
charge of ourselves and our circumstances.
Too much external locus of control We lose
initiative, lose motivation to achieve, have more
anxiety about what might happen to us, dont
bother developing willpower.

• Too much internal locus of control We blame
  ourselves for bad events, or have the illusion
  that we have the power to prevent bad events.

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Excessive Pessimism vs. Excessive Optimism



Realism
It will be easy, I wont think about it.
I cant do it, might as well forget it.
It might be hard Id better plan.
Im trapped, cant get out of this
I want to make changes or get out.
Someone will rescue me.
Im sure he just wants whats best for me, Ill
trust him.
That person hates me, he is against me.
I should ask what he feels about me, what he
wants.
Excessive pessimism can leave us depressed,
inactive. Excessive optimism can leave us
unprepared, unsafe.
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Aerobic Exercise and Health

• Aerobic exercise triggers certain genes to
  produce proteins which guard against more than 20
  chronic diseases and conditions.
• Aerobic exercise reduces the risk of heart
  disease, cognitive decline and dementia, and
  early death.

Aerobic exercise refers to sustained activity
that raises heart rate and oxygen consumption.
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Relaxation and Meditation

• Use of relaxation techniques can reduce
  headaches, high blood pressure, anxiety, and
  insomnia, and improve immune functioning.
• People who meditate can learn to create a
  relaxation response relaxed muscles, lower blood
  pressure, and slowed heart rate and breathing.
• Meditation also increases brain activity
  associated with positive emotions.
• Steps to get the relaxation response focus
  attention on breathing, a focus word, and
  relaxing muscles from toes upward.

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Faith Communities and Health

• While attendance at religious services may not
  directly save lives, it may make other healthy
  practices more likely.

• Religious attendance seems to have results,
  especially for men, comparable to the benefit of
  physically healthy lifestyle choices.

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Faith Communities and Health Intervening Factors

• The health impact of religious involvement may be
  indirect.
• Health may improve because of the lifestyle and
  emotional factors associated with religious
  involvement, and not just the faith.