Psychological Stress: "It Comes With the Territory"

Many of us have recently just finished up our mid-term week for the Fall semester and if it was like most college student’s experience, it was filled with copious amounts of stress.  We all experience stress in varying degrees, and to an extent it can be good for us; it keeps us alert, motivated and often people report they work best under high-pressure situations.  I must admit I have many times waited until the last minute to do an assignment, not necessarily because I was lazy, but because a little part of me knows that if I wait, then at that moment I will be forced to put all of my efforts into that assignment to get it done quickly and efficiently with exceptional results.  But isn't this what we all signed up for?  It is a known fact that being a student in a rigorous academic major comes with stress and high expectations, so should we really care to pay attention to it? Or should we just suck it up and get used to the stress that comes with the territory of the paths we have chosen? A recent article however points out that too much stress can come at a price, I know this is nothing we haven’t heard before but I think many of us fail to really look at what our day-to-day psychological stressors are doing to us physically.

            In this article it focused on nurses in particular, and the occupational stress that comes with being a nurse.  Many of us plan to work in some sort of health profession so I found this to be particularly applicable. Our physiological responses to stress are our body’s attempts to regulate itself and adapt to these outside stressors in triggering a new stress response within (Gaillard and Kramer, 2000). When this fight or flight response is activated to increase the body’s metabolism for an expected needed energy expenditure it stops other unessential functions. If disrupted over a long period of time this can result in a number of short-term and long-term physiological effects.

            Stress is obviously a crucial factor in many mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression.  However, it seems like in today’s society these mental illnesses are often over looked or dismissed to people “making it all up in their heads”, but I think it is necessary to see the physiological effects that our mental wellbeing has on us.  It is clear to see how health professionals would have enormous amounts of stress put on them by their job, but does that mean that this okay just because it is expected?  In the book titled, “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” by Robert M. Sapolsky he discusses how there are many ways that we can reduce our psychological stress responses and expectation was a crucial one in if our bodies are prepared for a stressor, then we can better respond to it (Sapolsky, 2004).   But like I said, just because it is expected doesn’t necessarily lighten the blow at all.  Occupational stress in the work place is an important issue and I think that as students who are preparing to enter into these fields of high psychological and physical demand, we need to become aware of this issue so that we may begin to formulate a solution to where this doesn’t have to be something we just deal with because it “comes with the job”.  Psychological stress is not something that stays confined to our mind, it is connected to our entire body and if not taken care of can lead to detrimental effects. 

References:

Donovan, R. O., Doody, O., & Lyons, R. (2013). The effect of stress on health and its implications for nursing. British Journal of Nursing,22(16), 969-973.

Gaillard AW, Kramer AF (2000) Theoretical and methodological issues in

psychophysiological research. In: Backs RW, Boucsein W, eds. Engineering

Psychophysiology: Issues and Applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,

Mahwah: 31–54

Sapolsky, Robert M. Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. New York: Owl Book/Henry Holt and, 2004. Print.