Stress On Psychological Well-Being

It can be seen that people in our world experience high levels of stress in their life. Even though, stress alone does not need to be perceived only negatively, the impacts of stress on human well-being can be problematical. This essay examines what stress is and an evidence relating stress and poor psychological well-being with the focus on distinguishing between different kinds of stressors and presenting a whole scale of negative effects both with potential solutions.
Understanding stress can be as challenging as stress itself. From a biological point of view, stress is a reaction of body to a threatening stimulus which includes activation of sympathetic nervous system and includes symptoms like increased blood pressure, faster heart rate

To start with, the most obvious effects of stress on psychological well-being can be observed in consequences of catastrophic events. These catastrophic events that can cause the development of a mental health problem include natural disasters like tsunami (Raj & Subramony, 2008; Neuner, Schauer, Catani, Ruf & Elbert, 2006) and hurricanes (Piotrowski, Armstrong & Stopp, 1997), terrorist attacks (Schuster et al., 2001), war (Shalev et al., 1998) or rape (Rothbaum, Foa, Riggs, Murdock & Walsh,

As an illustration, researchers from Denmark studied around 13,000 people diagnosed with depression and they suggest that people who experienced stressful life events like unemployment or suicide of a relative have 2-3 higher risk of being diagnosed with depression. (Kessing, Agerbo & Mortensen, 2003). Correspondingly, Kinderman, Schwannauer, Pontin and Tai (2013) conclude that stressful life events are the strongest predictors of depression and anxiety. Over 30,000 participants of the online survey reported demographical, social and biological data as well as self-report of stressful life events and test of stress coping strategies. Among all variables highly stressful life events were the most important predictors of depression