Heathrow airport, London, 2019. Photo by Henry Nicholls/Reuters
Can you recall a time when your workplace was especially busy, and no one seemed to have a chance to take a breather? Even if you were managing your own duties well, you might have found it challenging to remain calm in the face of the stress or anxiety penetrating the workplace. Simply watching people around you complaining or panicking can trigger tense feelings.
As social animals, we inherently tend to relate to other people’s experiences, ‘catch’ their emotions, and adopt their ways of appraising events as they unfold. Stress has traditionally been regarded by psychologists as something that emerges from someone’s personal, psychological response to situations in which the demands – eg, uncertainty, unpredictability, time pressure, conflicts, performance expectations – are high, while resources for coping with these demands are low.
Yet, this individual-level perspective on stress has been complemented in recent decades by evidence that interpersonal processes play a critical role as well. For example, Mina Westman and Arnold B Bakker published a series of studies examining the so-called ‘crossover’ of psychological strain in relationships and small groups. They found that in married couples, a spouse who is under a lot of pressure and experiences stress at work may bring such feelings back home, leading to an increase in the stress experienced by the other partner.
Bakker and colleagues also observed that the burnout levels of colleagues within a work team often converge or co-evolve over time. Emily Butler developed a ‘temporal interpersonal emotion systems’ (TIES) framework to explain how various elements of negative emotions, such as distress experience, expression and autonomic physiology, are transmitted between people…..Continue reading….
By: Shihan Li
Source: Why some people are at higher risk of ‘stress contagion’ | Psyche Ideas
Critics:
Stress can have many profound effects on the human biological systems.[35] Biology primarily attempts to explain major concepts of stress using a stimulus-response paradigm, broadly comparable to how a psychobiological sensory system operates. The central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) plays a crucial role in the body’s stress-related mechanisms.
Whether one should interpret these mechanisms as the body’s response to a stressor or embody the act of stress itself is part of the ambiguity in defining what exactly stress is. The central nervous system works closely with the body’s endocrine system to regulate these mechanisms. The sympathetic nervous system becomes primarily active during a stress response, regulating many of the body’s physiological functions in ways that ought to make an organism more adaptive to its environment.
Below there follows a brief biological background of neuroanatomy and neurochemistry and how they relate to stress. Stress, either severe, acute stress or chronic low-grade stress may induce abnormalities in three principal regulatory systems in the body: serotonin systems, catecholamine systems, and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis. Aggressive behavior has also been associated with abnormalities in these systems.
The brain endocrine interactions are relevant in the translation of stress into physiological and psychological changes. The autonomic nervous system (ANS), as mentioned above, plays an important role in translating stress into a response. The ANS responds reflexively to both physical stressors (for example baroreception), and to higher level inputs from the brain.
The ANS is composed of the parasympathetic nervous system and sympathetic nervous system, two branches that are both tonically active with opposing activities. The ANS directly innervates tissue through the postganglionic nerves, which is controlled by preganglionic neurons originating in the intermediolateral cell column. The ANS receives inputs from the medulla, hypothalamus, limbic system, prefrontal cortex, midbrain and monoamine nuclei.
Some studies have observed increased risk of upper respiratory tract infection during chronic life stress. In patients with HIV, increased life stress and cortisol was associated with poorer progression of HIV. Also with an increased level of stress, studies have proven evidence that it can reactivate latent herpes viruses.
Chronic stress has also been shown to impair developmental growth in children by lowering the pituitary gland‘s production of growth hormone, as in children associated with a home environment involving serious marital discord, alcoholism, or child abuse. Chronic stress also has a lot of illnesses and health care problems other than mental that comes with it.
Severe chronic stress for long periods of time can lead to an increased chance of catching illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, depression, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease. More generally, prenatal life, infancy, childhood, and adolescence are critical periods in which the vulnerability to stressors is particularly high. This can lead to psychiatric and physical diseases which have long term impacts on an individual….
Related contents:
- Cadmium-induced oxidative stress in Saccharomyces cerevisiae”. Indian Journal of Biochemistry and Biophysics.
- “Biology of stress”. CESH / CSHS. Retrieved 27 September 2022.
- Neural Regulation of Endocrine and Autonomic Stress Responses”. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
- Stress and the HPA Axis”. Alcohol Research: Current Reviews.
- Neurobiology of BDNF in fear memory, sensitivity to stress, and stress-related disorders”. Molecular Psychiatry.
- Psychological Stress and the Human Immune System: A Meta-Analytic Study of 30 Years of Inquiry”. Psychological Bulletin.
- Acute stress reactions”.
- New Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry (2nd ed.).
- “The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders Clinical descriptions and diagnostic guidelines” (PDF). http://www.who.int
- “Meaning of aetiology in English”.
- Psychological Stress and Disease” (PDF). JAMA.
- Health psychology: Developing biologically plausible models linking the social world and physical health”. Annual Review of Psychology.
- The International Journal of Indian Psychology, Volume 1, Issue 1.
- Stress of Homework”. The British Medical Journal.
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