Sociology: Defining Stress

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Part A: Defining Stress

1. What is Stress?

Stress is how the body, specifically the nervous system, reacts to mental pressure. The person may feel under pressure, overloaded, overwhelmed, strained or anxious about certain tasks or events. Stress can be a good thing where it can motivate the person to reach their full potential but stress can also be a bad thing as it can damage a person’s health.

2. Physiological Effects of Stress

This refers to how stress physically affects the body of a person whether it is inside the body within the internal organs or outside the body on skin, and these effects can be easier to notice than psychological effects.
• Musculoskeletal System: when a person is stressed, the muscles tense up until the stress …show more content…

Stress may cause people to breath harder and rapidly, which becomes a form of hyperventilation leading to a panic attack.
• Esophagus: Stress causing a person to either eat in larger amounts or in smaller amounts. There might be an increased intake of alcohol or cigarette usage. Stress also causes heartburn and acid reflux.

3. Psychological Effects of Stress

This refers to how stress affects the state of mind of a person therefore stress will have an effect on the emotions, mood, behavior, personality and mental health of a person.
• Personality Changes: When a person is stressed they may experience feelings of irritability, hostility, anger aggression, miscommunication, isolation, disinterest in appearance, impulsivity such as gambling and compulsive behavior rituals such as cleaning.
• Depression: This is a result of chronic stress where the person is unable to complete normal activities, cant concentrate, cant make decisions, experience feelings of worthlessness, guilt, self-hate and have suicidal thoughts.
• Anxiety: The signs of anxiety include excessive worrying, inability to cope with normal activities, feeling of helplessness and sense of impending …show more content…

• Internal Pressure: Stress increases when a person has personal expectations for themselves therefore pressure are developed in a person’s mind.
• Time Pressure: When a student has not enough time to prepare for the exam or does not have enough time to answer all the questions in the exam, both these situations become stressful.

5. Important to Draw Attention to Problem of Stress

I feel that it is important to draw attention to the problem of stress because stress has so many effects on the health of people as stress can lead to several physiological and psychological diseases, which will then lower the life expectancy. If people are aware of stress they will adopt ways of to prevent stress and also be better equipped to deal with it when they are faced with stress.

6. Symptoms of Stress

• Frequent Colds: Stress lowers the efficiency of the immune systems which decreases its ability to fight against infections therefore the person is more likely to get sick.
• Frequent Crying Spells: When a person feels overloaded they will react emotionally in the form of crying which is linked to feeling of

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