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Stress and Coping

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Stress and Coping
Stress and Coping

Stress is the combination of physiological, psychological and behavioural effects when people are responding to any challenges or threatening situations. Long term stress reduced the capacity of our body to adapt. Stress influence conception, development and result of an illness. The source of stress has to change or adapt to balance our body system (Potter & Perry, 1997). Overton (2005) illustrates a good example that when our body is stressed due to the exposure to extreme cold or heat, the physical reaction to restore balance is to bring the temperature down by perspiring and bringing the temperature up by shivering, called homeostasis.

Anything that induces stress either psychological or physical is called stressor (Pinel, 2003). Some form of stress can be good and sometimes provide people with added alertness or energy to motivate people to learn new skills, gain new strengths, develop good point of view and it can cause them to assess priorities, it is called eustress. In general, the adverse situation may promote growth and improvement to someone resilient who had been subjected to stress. On the other hand, stress often resulted in a more unpleasant emotional state known as distress, which can even be harmful when not deal with effectively (Weiten, 2011). This is the unpleasant stress inducing event that happened to me lately, the bereavement of my mother and the last exams that I have to deal with.

The malfunction of HPA axis management can result to pathological diseases (Guillians & Edwards, 2010). The hypothalamus particularly Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) Axis and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is a part of the brain that spring into action in times of potential danger or an alteration in homeostasis due to stressor which triggers hormones to respond. It operates as a relay or signal control centre that alerts all autonomic body responses (Overton, 2005 and Guillians & Edwards, 2010).



References: Berger, K. (1998). The school years: Psychosocial development in the developing person through the life span. New York, NY: Worth Publishers. Carver, C.S. (1997). You want to measure coping but your protocols too long: Consider the Brief COPE. International of Behavioural Medicine, 4(1), s92. Retrieved from AUT Library Database. Cohen, S., Kamarch, T. & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 24(4), 385-396. Retrieved from AUT Library database. Fink, G. (Ed.). (2000). Encyclopedia of stress (3rd ed.). California, USA: Acadamic Press Geisner, I. M. (2008). A randomised clinical trial of a brief, mailed intervention for depressed mood in a college student sample. MI, USA: UMI Microform. Guillians, T. & Edwards, L. (2010). Chronic stress and the HPA Axis: Clinical assessment and therapeutic considerations. A Review of Natural & Nutraceutical Therapies for Clinical Practice, 9(2), 1-12. Retrieved from http://www.pointinstitute.org/resources/standard_v_9.2_hpa_axis.pdf Overton, A. (2005). Stress less: Make stress work for you not against you. Auckland, NZ: Random House NZ. Pinel, P. J. (Ed.). (2003). Biopsychology (5th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education Potter, P.A. & Perry, A.G. (Eds). (1997) Fundamentals of nursing: Concept, process and practice (4th ed.). St. Louis, Missouri: Mosby-Year Book Weitin. (2011). Psychology: Themes and variations: briefer version (8th ed). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.

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