IMPACT OF STRESS ON PHYSICAL AND

MENTAL HEALTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL

- NIHARIKA MOUDGIL

Stress is a negative emotional experience accompanied by predictable

biochemical, physiological, cognitive and behavioural changes that are
directed either towards altering the stressful event or accommodating to its
effects.

The earliest contribution to stress research was made by Walter

Canon who proposed that when an organism perceives a threatful situation
the body is rapidly aroused which allows the organism to either attack the
threat or flee, hence it is called the FIGHT OR FLIGHT response.
Another early contribution was made by Hans Selye who gave the
GENERAL ADATATION SYNDROME, he argued that a person will
respond with the same physiological pattern regardless of the cause of
threat. The general adaptation syndrome consisted of three phases- the
alarm reaction, resistance and exhaustion. Lazarus and Folkman believed
that stress is the consequence of a person’s appraisal process which is of
three types, primary appraisal involves understanding the event, secondary
appraisal assesses whether personal resources are sufficient to meet the
demands of the situation and finally assessing the potential of those
resources and responding to the threat.

MECHANISMS OF STRESS ON HEALTH

Even though some level of stress is considered healthy and acts as a
motivating factor foe an individual, chronic and regular stress can have
adverse effects on an individual and their health. The early contributions
towards the study of stress have helped researchers in identifying the
mechanisms and pathways by which stress leads to poor health.
The first pathway involves a direct effect on the physiology of a person, as
both Cannon and Selye showed how stress alters the bodily functions and
the way in which it does so along with how it interacts with the existing
risks or genetic predispositions which determine the illness that an
individual is prone to get. For example if a person is genetically
predisposed to blood pressure and heart problems then he is more likely to
encounter these illnesses as compared to someone who is not genetically
predisposed to them.
A second set of pathways include the health habits of an individual, it is
found that people who live with chronic stress are more prone to having
poorer health habits than a person who is not. The poor health habits
include smoking, poor nutrition, little sleep and use of substances such as
alcohol and drugs. Over the long term these habits can contribute to
specific illnesses which can be chronic and even lead to death.

Stress can also have an effect on the psychosocial resources which is a basic
need for everyone. Supportive social contacts are protective of health but
stress can often lead an individual into avoiding these social contacts or
behaving in ways that will drive them away. Optimism, self-esteem and a
sense of personal control also contribute to good health yet many stressors
undermine these beneficial beliefs.
The fourth set of mechanism by which stressed adversely affects health
involves the use of health services and following treatment
recommendations. People are less likely to follow to a treatment regimen
and they’re more likely to delay seeking care for disorders that should be
treated when they are under stress.

PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SYMPTOMS OF

STRESS

Stress manifests its self through variety of symptoms, the most common
signs of stress is increase nervousness, anxiety and tension. Stress also
shows up in anger and irritability with others and takes a toll in fatigue and
leads to a sense of depression. Other symptoms of stress include muscle
aches stomach ache and overall feeling of being upset, insomnia and loss of
sleep and increased heartbeat. Many of the symptoms of the body is
physiological stress response that is automatically built in reactions over
which we have little control however sometimes the symptoms of stress
results from a psychological reaction to events and are more dependent on
the way we perceive a situation and our capacity of dealing with it.

Stress engages psychological distress and leads to changes in the body that
may have short and long term consequences for health. The sympathetic-
adrenomedullary system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical
axis are the two interrelated systems heavily involved in the stress response.

When stress is perceived as harmful, they are identified by the

cerebral cortex from where it is transmitted to the hypothalamus which
initiates one of the earliest responses to stress namely the sympathetic
nervous system. This sympathetic arousal stimulates the medulla of the
adrenal glands which further lead to the secretion of catecholamines
epinephrine and norepinephrine. These effects result in our physical
symptoms to stress which include: increased blood pressure, increased
heart rate, increased sweating, among other symptoms. Parasympathetic
functioning may also become disrupted in response to stress, this system is
an important restorative affect of sleep, therefore another physical
symptom of stress can be seen through disturbances in sleep pattern.
The hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis is also activated in response to
stress and releases corticotrophin releasing hormone, prolonged secretion
of cortisol has also been related to problems with destruction of neurons in
the hippocampus which can further lead to problems with verbal
functioning, memory and concentration. Prolonged HPA activation leads
to storage of fat in visceral areas rather than in hips , therefore some
researchers use high waist-to-hip ratio as a marker for chronic stress.
Inflammation can also be seen as a physical symptom of stress as stress as
also compromises the functioning of the immune system which further
changes the ability of the immune system to terminate inflammation, an
early response to stress.

Unlike the body’s stress reaction, our psychological reactions are shared by
learning and are heavily dependent on the way we perceive the world. As
most of us stressors invoke anxiety -that something bad is about to happen-
the most familiar psychological reaction to stress are the defence
mechanisms. They are called defence mechanisms because they help one to
protect themselves from threat, although defence mechanisms are
influenced by learning to some extent they are largely automatic and
unconscious reactions to keep ourselves from being overwhelmed by
intense psychological stress.
Stress also invokes a wide range of emotions ranging from a sense
of exhilaration in the face of minor challenging stressors to more familiar
negative emotions of anger, fear, jealousy and discouragement. Stressful
life experiences involving loss of friends or separation from loved ones are
frequently associated with depression. Pronounced HPA activation is
common in depression, with episodes of cortisol secretion being more
common among depressed than nondepressed people. Release of
epinephrine and norepinephrine is the physiological response of the body to
stress, however excessive discharge of these can lead to suppression of
cellular immune functioning and produce neurochemical imbalances that
may contribute to the development of psychiatric disorders.

RESEARCH STUDIES

A study was conducted by Taehan Kanho Hakhoe chi to identify the

relationship between self-efficacy, health promoting behaviours and
symptoms of stress among university students. Data was collected by
questionnaires from 369 university students and was analysed using
descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficients, and stepwise
multiple regression. The results showed a mean score of 3.42 for self-
efficacy, 2.48 for health promoting behaviour and 2.31 for symptoms of
stress. Symptoms of stress showed a negative correlation with diet, spiritual
growth, interpersonal relationships and stress management. The most
powerful predictor of symptoms of stress was self-efficacy with a variance
of 10%. This study suggested that self-efficacy and health promoting
behaviour are significant influencing factors of symptoms of stress among
university students.

Another study was conducted by Mark Cropley with the objective of

examining whether functional social support buffers the effects of chronic
and recent life stress on physical symptom reporting in men and women
and assess whether perceptions of support remain stable over time. A
longitudinal design was used. Self-ratings of stressful experiences were
completed every 3 months over a period of 1 year. Physical symptoms were
assessed at 6 and 12 months, and perceptions of social support were
measured at baseline and at 12 months. Three groups were formed on the
basis of average stress values for the first and second 6 months of the year:
chronic low stress, chronic high stress and a recent high-stressed group
consisting of individuals who reported low stress for the first 6 months, but
high stress for the second 6 months of the year. As expected, high life stress
was associated with greater symptom reporting. Perceptions of support
remained stable and did not decline over the 12 months. After controlling
for negative affectivity and physical symptoms at 6 months, no main effects
of social support were found on reported physical health. However,
perceived social support did moderate physical symptom reporting in those
reporting recent high stress. For chronically high-stressed individuals there
was no significant difference in physical symptoms between those with high
or low social support. It was concluded that social support moderates the
impact of recent but not chronic life stress on physical symptom reporting.
CONCLUSION

Despite the commonly found symptoms of stress, not every individual

shows the same symptoms. An individual’s symptom to stress may be
different from another even under the same stressor, this is because people
vary in their reactivity to stress. Change that occurs in the autonomic,
immune responses as a result of stress. Some people are predisposed by
their genetic makeup, prenatal experiences and life experiences to be more
biologically reactive to stress than others and consequently they may be
especially vulnerable to adverse health consequences due to stress.
Recovery following stress is also an important physiology of stress
response, the inability to recover quickly from a stressful event may be a
marker for the cumulative damage that the stress has caused. The concept
of allostatic load has been developed to refer to the physiological cost of
chronic exposure to the physiological changes that result from repeated or
chronic stress.
Since stress is a never ending part of any person’s life therefore people
have to learn to cope with it to minimize all its negative effects. Coping is
defined as the thoughts and behaviours used to manage the internal and
external demands of situation that are appraised as stressful.

REFERENCES

1) Taylor E, Shelly. Health Psychology. McGraw Hill Education,

2015.

2) Hakhoe K, Taehan. “ Self efficacy, health promoting behaviour

and symptoms of stress among university students”. 2005 June.

3) Cropley Mark, Steptoe Andrew. “Social support, life events and

physical symptoms: A prospective study of chronic and recent
life stress in men and women”. Health and Medicine
Psychology, Vol 10, Issue 4. 2007 Jan.