Major Life Events And Stress Assessment Paper

482 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Research on self assessment

Self-Assessment # 8 – Major Life Events & Stress

The Major Life Events & Stress assessment was taken from the “Life Changes Scaling for the 1990’s” by Miller and Rahe published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research. This practical assessment aims to draw a link between recent important life events and potential negative effects on health. Since the circumstances and events described can be experienced by any adult, this test addresses a general audience. The assessment offers an extensive list of life events divided into categories—health, work, home & family, personal & social, and financial—and assigns a stress value to each event. When completing this assessment, the participant needs to reflect on major life events that took place during the last year and circle the number in front of those events. Lastly, one must add up the points and the total score will indicate either low, moderate, or high stress levels. Naturally, these different stress levels can have a direct impact on one’s health. …show more content…

Furthermore, the final goal is to realize that extremely high levels of stress can lead to different physical and mental health issues. After adding up my results, I ended up with 376 points which means that I have experienced a “moderate amount of stress” during the last year. My largest stressors came from changing to a new type of work with new hours, finishing my associates’ degree, and changing of college. Personally, I found this assessment to be interesting and practical and consider it a valid tool to measure stress levels and predict possible health

Show More
Related

  • The Relationship Between the Transactional Model, and the General Adaptation Syndrome

    1591 Words  | 4 Pages

    The term ‘stress’ was generally thought to have been a concept created by Robert Hooke in the 17th century. He worked on the design of physical structures, such as bridges; his concept of stress came from how much pressure a structure could withstand. However, Lazarus (1993) pointed out that the term ‘stress’ has been used as far back as the 14th century, when it meant hardship or adversity. Back then it referred to the external stressor, such as the death of a spouse or financial worry; in the 20th century, there are many different schools of thought on this area. Hans Selye (1956), brought together the work of Cannon and Bernard and devised a comprehensive system of physiological stress; which he termed the ‘General Adaptation Syndrome’, and is a 3-stage process. He theorised that a certain level of stress called ‘eustress’ (Cox, 1978) could actually be beneficial to our overall performance. Later In 1976, Cox & Mackay devised another model called the ‘Transactional model’. This model takes into account the individual differences in the perception of the amount of stress experienced by the person. The main difference between these two models is that Selye’s model only accounts for the physiological side of stress, whereas Cox’s model takes into account both the physiological and psychological aspects of stress. Therefore, both models will have slight similarities and differences in their explanation for how stress occurs in individuals, which is the main focus of this essay.

    Read More

  • Assessment Tools for Helping the Homeless

    1186 Words  | 3 Pages

    The aforementioned primary stress components are stress-inducers, stress mediator, and stress indicators based on the areas of life events, personality, and psychopathology. Each of the primary stress components has their own corresponding numbers or scale to determine the total stress score. A DSP ...

    Read More

  • Psy 100 Application Assignment : Stress And Health Profile

    1492 Words  | 3 Pages

    The overall score for Scale 1: Stressed out? was fourteen (14). The average for someone in my age group, gender and marital status runs about 12.367. It is obviously a higher number than I would like it to be. Or is it? Although this may have startled me at first, it would be ridiculous for me to claim ignorance. I’ve been attempting for some time now, to work on the issues that increase my stress, and to modify the way I live in order to avoid stress and achieve a healthier way of life. I have a long way to go. A couple of year ago, I managed to bring my weight down from 285 lbs. to 201. I was working out and feeling good. However, the engrained patterns of my previous behavior, managed to slowly seduce me into the larger-portion, higher-calorie foods I have always adored. For someone my age, and at the level of stress I “unmanage” to work, could result fatal in ...

    Read More

  • Stress In The American Dream

    828 Words  | 2 Pages

    Majority people travel from all corners of the earth to America, “Land of the Free,” to create better lives; living the American dream is a dream for more than just Americans. The beautiful thing about America is this dream can actually become reality, but the impediment of this dream is that it can morph into a living nightmare. Stress can be the producer to this dream turned horror movie. According to American Psychological Association adults in America are continuously reporting high levels of stress, and the stress level is currently rising. Causes and effects of stress are dispersed from all aspects of the American culture. Some fervent causes of stress are financial obligations, divorce, and personal discontentment. There are so

    Read More

  • Happiness Questionnaire Essay

    448 Words  | 1 Pages

    Taking the following questionnaire: Satisfaction with Life Scale, Approaches to Happiness Scale, and Authentic Happiness Inventory, helped me evaluate my life. Many times due to circumstance we forget in what positon our life is standing at the moment. We forget how much we have accomplished in the past and how much we have invested to make our future a good one. For the Satisfaction with life scale, I score a 33(love their life and feel that everything is going very well). People may might say well she is living a perfect life, but to be honest is not that is being perfect, is that one day years ago I made a decision of not letting anything take away what I have worked hard for. According to Earl & Carol Diener, because positive moods energize approach tendencies, it desirable that people on average be in a positive mood (1996). If I make a mistake, which is possible because am human, what I do is learn from it. It’s like what the Apostol from the church I go to says” you control life, not life controlling you.”

    Read More

  • Stress and Cardiovascular Disease

    1249 Words  | 3 Pages

    Claar, R. L., & Blumenthal J. A. (2003). The value of stress-management interventions in life-

    Read More

  • Returning Adult Student

    920 Words  | 2 Pages

    Stress comes from many areas of life especially as an adult student incorporating school at a time in life when family and work are paramount. “Adults just returning to school have substantially higher anxiety about school in general and writing in particular than younger students.”3 Stress, best described by its "synonyms: strain, pressure, (nervous) tension, worry, anxiety, trouble, difficultly"1 has a medical history "According to the American Psychological Association, the majority of office visits to the doctor involve stress-related complaints, and stress is linked to the six leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide."2 If managed, stress can be a way to inform me; learning how to recognize my level of stress capacity is important. The Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory 5 http://www.stress.org/holmes-rahe-stress-inventory/ is a list of stressful events that contribute to illness. My personal score on this life stress inventory is 236; I fall in the category of about a fifty percent chance of a major health breakdown in the next...

    Read More

  • Life Stress Test

    576 Words  | 2 Pages

    When I took the life stress test, the score that I got was 132, and according to the test, I have a low to moderate chance of being ill in the future. I found that some of the things that cause me stress weren’t on the test, such as having doubts/worries in your friendships, and doubts/dissatisfaction with yourself and your habits. I also find that the weight of each stress varies with each person, so it may not be the most accurate life stress test. Other than that, I’m glad that I was on the lowest end of the stress scale, and that I won’t be ill in the near future. Sometimes I find it hard to pinpoint what exactly causes me stress and unhappiness in my life, which causes me to think about whether I am stressing over nothing. When I think about it now after taking the life stress test, I realize that a lot of my stress comes from my perfectionistic habits and feeling anxious about an accumulation of things related to school, my career, and my relationships.

    Read More

  • Occupational Stress in a Call Center Center

    1716 Words  | 4 Pages

    Seward, B. (2012). Managing stress: Principles and strategies for health and well-being. (7th ed.). Burlington, Ma: Jones and Barlett Publishing.

    Read More

  • Stress Management Reflection Paper

    1165 Words  | 3 Pages

    I chose a level 3 of stress because it stands for somewhat stressful. I am feeling this, because I’ve had a lot of school work this semester. I fell that it is normal during this time of year for feel somewhat stressful. My second score for the question about my average level of stress I put a 4. I chose this because I released that I am not really stressed when I don 't have any school work to worry about. My third score for my stress level was a 5. This means I have a moderate level of personal stress. I agree with this score I got, because I notice that I have some personal stresses every once in

    Read More

  • The Effects of Stress in our Life

    732 Words  | 2 Pages

    Living in a society where many things cause stress in the lives of people whether it be because of work, school, family, friends, traffic on the freeway, unemployment, bills, children, and the list goes on and on. When visiting the doctor about symptoms of headaches, not getting enough sleep, or worried about a lot of things the doctor say that person has signs of stress and tells that person how they should handle by resting, exercising, and other things that help stress relief. The question from many maybe what is stress? Stress is a strange pressure on the body that does not allow the body to function properly. Most people who stress assume something bad is happening to them, but what if stressful things or situations could actually be a good thing on the mind and body. How can this be true?! All the time in formation that is given about stress is negative like stress can kill, do not stress out so much, or the question why are people stressing out to make individuals believe stress is a bad thing. Well lets prove this theory wrong by stating the fact that stress is actually good for everyone and that people should love to live with a little of it in their life.

    Read More

  • Stress Affects Everybody Differently

    1117 Words  | 3 Pages

    Stressors have 3 general categories: catastrophes, major life changes and daily hassles. Catastrophes are sudden, often life-threatening calamities or disasters that push people to the outer limits of their coping capability. These include natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes. Major life changes include death of a loved one, divorce, imprisonment, job loss and major disability. Daily hassles include everyday annoyances due to jobs, personal relationships and everyday living circumstances. (3)

    Read More

  • Three Different Concepts Of Stress And Eustress

    1729 Words  | 4 Pages

    What one individual finds to be a stressful event may not be perceived as a stressful event to another. Therefore, defining stress can prove to be a challenging task; however, for the purpose of this proposal, stress will be defined as the inability to cope with a perceived threat to one’s mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well‐being, which results in a series of physiological responses and adaptations (Seaward, 2004, p. 5). According to Seaward (2004), there are three different kinds of stress: eustress, neustress, and distress. Eustress is the positive or motivating stress a person may experience, whereas distress is generally considered to be bad stress. Neustress, on the other hand, is considered neither good nor bad. Graduate

    Read More

  • Stressors Essay

    1701 Words  | 4 Pages

    Everybody deals with stress in their everyday life. Stress does not care if they are rich or poor, employed or unemployed, black or white. Many people experience physical maladies due to stress, but what is stress? Why is it so powerful to cause hearts to stop, and stomachs to develop holes? The American Institute of Stress says that ‘The term “stress”, as it is currently used was coined by Hans Selye in 1936, who defined it as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change”.’(The American Institute of Stress [AIS], 2015). Another definition to consider is “Stress is a fact of nature in which forces from the inside or outside world affect the individual.” (MedicineNet, 2015). A third definition is as follows, “Stress: The responses of individuals to environmental stressors” (King, 2014, p. G-10).

    Read More

  • Stress Experience Essay

    908 Words  | 2 Pages

    A.) The most stressful event I had my freshman year of college was getting back into the routine of school. Right out of high school I left to serve in the Marine Corps, which placed me behide most peers in my age range. Getting back into the school routine meant having to overcome my social awkwardness, shyness and learning how be a student. With already being diagnosed with anxiety, panic attacks, depression and hard to adapt to new surrounding it made me feel overwhelmed with all the change I was about to endure. With having the stress from going to school I was worried because it is my only income and I am labeled as “not at school person.” Education has also been one of my big stressors my whole life. Applying for school I had to take

    Read More

More about Major Life Events And Stress Assessment Paper

Open Document