Stress

Stress is the person's body response to a stressor such as an environmental condition or a stimulus. Stress is a caused due to challenges which the body faces. The way the body responses to stress is by sympathetic nervous system activation which results in what is referred to as fight-or-flight response( a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival).Stress can be described as a negative condition or a positive condition, which both can have an impact on a person's mental and physical well-being.

Author of Age, stress, and isolation in older adults living with HIV, authors Webel, Allison R, Longenecker, Chris T Gripshover, Barbara Hanson, Jan E Schmotzer, and Brian J conducted a study research of People living with HIV and the challenges they face due to Age, stress, and having a long life span. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the age and sex of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH) are associated with measures of physiologic stress, perceived stress, and social isolation. They conducted experiments with patients who have HIV of all different age group to see how they are affected by having a longer stress due to life span. They found older people who HIV /aid faced different challenges than younger People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH), which included increased stress and social isolation. In this study, there were 102 younger and old people who People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH) who were divided equally into four groups divided by age from young to old, and into gender. The Participants complete a survey to measure the amount of stress and isolation on them. Their findings suggest that younger PLWH experience more social isolation, and people who were older were more stress, and seek out friendships of other.

Even though I don't know anyone with Living with HIV/AIDS, I could relate to their stress, and why the acted the way they did. I think people who were older had more stress, and seek friendship, is because they have lived with the disease for such a long time due to modern medicine, which they lost all hope for a cur; so they were trying reach out to other for friendship to have some like them that could understand what they were going through. On the other hand people who were young didn't experience as much stress is probably because they just contracted the disease, and they still have hope for a cure. (Webel)

Another researcher who studied Stress is Margaret Lunney, wrote Stress Overload: A New Diagnosis. Lunney conducted an experiment of the study of stress on nurses. She found that nurses who had a lot of stress overload due to excessive amount of health demands of patient care. She found that nursed who suffered from stress overload, felt the tensions of pressure, which made it difficult to function as usual. They also expressed problems with decision making, which they demonstrated an increase feelings of anger and impatience, which lead to negative effects from stress such as physical symptoms or psychological distress.

In her studies she also found that nurses who were over stress would make lots of mistakes that they would usually make if they weren't stressed.

I could also relate to Webel observation because, in today's society health care is facing a nurses shortage, which nurses have to work longer hours, and cover too many patients at a time. So, I can see why nurse would be distress, feel anger, and make uncommon mistake; due to having to jump from one patient to another.

In conclusion, even though the two researchers seem to go into different areas of Stress, they both have the ideas of Stress. Their writing illustrates how stress can impact a person's life. Reading and summarizing their writings, I found that both their and my mine opinions both agree on the matter, and we share a common ground on the topic.