Stress in Everyday Life

Various methods of dealing with Stress

Psychological Methods

-Cognitive Behavioual Therapy (CBT)

-Increasing Hardiness

Psysiological Methods

-Drugs

-Social Support

Cognitive Behavoural Therapy (CBT)

Michenbaum - Stress Incoulation Therapy (SIT)
-Identifiy and analyse the source of stress

Three stages of SIT
1. Conceptualisation Stage - Client and therapist establish a relationship; Client then educated on their stress
2. Skills Aquisition Stage - Coping skills taught and practised
3. Application stage - Clients given the opportunity to apply new coping skills (ie; modelling, role play and by imitation) to imagined stressful situations

Application in the real world - Keith and Leith (1993)
-Sports men and women response to stress can hinder performance
-If they understand, this thinking can effect their sporting abilites if they develop new coping strategies via SIT
-This can increase their performance

Evidence - Sheehy and Horan (2004)
-examined the effects of SIT on anxiety stress and academic performance
-Found significant improvement in reducing  anxiety and stress and increasing exam performance
-Provides the skills for client to deal with not only the current, but future problems too.
-Better for Moderately stressed than high stressed individuals
-Any psychological method only suit motivated individuals who are willing to put the time and effort in
-No ethical issues

Evaluation
-Most research done with white middle class so cannot be generalised
-Effects of SIT are often compared to no training or treatment  making it easy for SIT to appear successful
-Time Consuming
-Unnecessarily complex as maybe as effective to learn to take more postively and relax more
-Evidence that it is factors common to all types of therapy (EG; Relationship between Client and Therapist) that actually help individuals cope with stress

-Focusing: be aware of pysical signs of stress; identify stressful situations
-Reconstructions: Think about stressful situations, how could they have turned out better? or worse? Helps feel more poitive
-Self Improvement: take on challenges that can be coped with, increasing sense of being able to cope - self efficiancy

Evaluation of Hardiness Treatment

-Tackles the cause of stress
-People who have completed Hardiness Training have lower blood pressure than before (Sarafino 1990)
-However the procedures are lengthy and involve considerable time and effort

2 types of drugs
-Benzosiaziones (BZ; eg; valium, maggadon) - Slows down activity of the CNS
-Beta Blockers - Reduced the activity of Adrenaline and Nor-Adrenaline

-Both deal with pysical effects of stress to reduce bodily arousal.
-However, BZ can have, when used long term, side effects which can include paradoxial symptoms, increased agression and memory impairment
-Pysical dependancy -BZs only

Evaluation of BZ
-rapid onset of action              
-effective with greatest majority of people and are generally well tolerant
-When used over short periods of time, BZs rarely produce side effects although side effects usually include drowsiness, feelings of depression
-can become addictive and stopping them can produce unplesant withdrawal symptoms
-risk of tollerance, may need to take increasing larger doses of the drug to reduce levels of stress + anxiety
-Treat symptoms but not the cause
-Cost effective