‘To what extent does research support a link between stress and illness’ (12 marks) There is proven to be correlation between stress & illness. Stress can cause problems with the circulatory system, problems such as high blood pressure, coronary heart disease caused by atherosclerosis and stroke.
Kiecolt-Glaser et al (1995) supported the link between stress and illness. The study showed the slowing of wound healing in relation to psychological stress (especially how stress damages the immune system).
He took 26 participants, recruited by volunteer sampling, in a field experiment; all were given a small cut into their arms. Participants were given a stress scale up to 10, and were asked to state how stressed they felt. Levels of cytokines were also taken from all participants. The participants in the experimental group, consisted of 13 women aged between 47 & 81 years old looking after a relative with Alzheimer’s disease. The control group was matched with the carers on age & income. The tests indicated that the experimental group showed higher levels of stress than the control groups. Healing wound time was assessed by photographing the wound regularly and by observing the response to hydrogen peroxide. The time take for the wound to heal was a lot longer for carers (48.7 days) compared to the control group (39.3 days) and also were significantly a larger average size.
The Essay on Gun Control 33
Gun Control Gun control pro et contra... Despite the recent events such as the Virginia massacre and other flagrant violations of the law politicians and civilians still debate the constitutionality and efficacy of federal regulations of ammunition and firearms. What is at issue is the influence of free access to firearms on crime rate and state security. Both the advocates and supporters of gun ...
Another researcher who found a supportive link between stress & illness was Russek (1962), who aimed to find a link between work-related stress & heart disease. He tested Medical professionals and labelled them as high-stress or low-stress according to their role. GPs (high-stress) had the greatest rate of heart disease (11.9%) and dermatologists (low-stress) had the least heart disease (3.2%).
This showed that there is a link between heart disease and stress within a job. However the dermatologists may have a higher stress job than predicted and also professional lives may not be the only cause of stress e.g. personal lives may also have affected stress levels. Brown and Harris (1978) found that women who suffered chronic stress conditions (such as having more than three children under the age of 14 at home, and being unemployed) were more likely to develop depression. They also reported that working-class women were more prone to depression than middle-class women because of the stress of having to leave the home to work and leaving their children in the care of others.
However, Lazarus (1992) suggests there are various reasons why a relationship between stress and illness is difficult to establish. One reason is that health is affected by many different factors, such as genetic influences and lifestyle. As a result, there may be little variance left that can be accounted for by stress. Also, health is generally fairly stable and slow to change. Therefore this makes it difficult to show that exposure to a certain stressor have caused the change in health. The last reason from Lazarus is that demonstrating how stress affects long-term health would involve continuous measurement over a long period of time. This would be expensive and impractical; therefore most research has concentrated on relatively short periods of time. Also, there are problems with determining a causal link between stress and depression.
It is frequently not possible to access whether stressful events in the period before diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder have caused the disorder or have been a consequence of the persons deteriorating state. Also, most studies have made use of retrospective methodology, in which recall of events tends to be unreliable. Prospective, where people who have experienced a stressful event are followed over time, are rare. Although the relationship between stress and depression has been demonstrated by some researchers, others (e.g Rabkin 1993) claim that the effects are small, accounting for less than 10% of the variance observed.
The Essay on Stress Health Environmental Israel
... are powerful stress busters. web 's health problems are similar to those prevailing in the Western world. Since heart diseases and cancer ... these areas may help to explain how stress can contribute to depression, anxiety and its diverse effects on the ... poverty, bereavement, depression and frustration due to discrimination are associated with impaired immune system resistance to viral linked disorders ...
