Stress and health dysfunctions: The importance of health education

Abstract

Stress, especially of a chronic nature, poses problems for the health of people in contemporary societies. In consequence, there is an increasing need for emphasis on health education as a means of controlling and reducing stress in everyday life. To accomplish this, the importance of predisposing and mediating factors must be considered and a number of stress intervention programs are possible. Amongst these are various means to modify life style and knowledge of various social and environmental factors can contribute to this. As complete avoidance from stress is not possible, the public and particularly the high at‐risk segment of the population, should have the means to obtain education concerning stress and health dysfunctions.

Stress, Hypertension, and Young Black Americans: The Importance of Counseling

“…The dominant view of stress adopted in this paper is consistent with the interactionist view of stress alluded to in the past by this author (Livingston, 1985(Livingston, , 1988a(Livingston, . 1991 and others (e.g., Lazarus, 1978).…”

“…1967. p. 78) A perusal of the literature shows a wide variation in the usage of the stress concept. For example, it has been used as a stimulus, an external negative force impinging on an individual: as a response, an individual's emotional or physiological reactions to internal or external events: and as an interaction between an individual and his or her surroundings, as a person-environment problem resulting from perceptions and appraisals of one's internal and external environments (Lazarus, 1978: Livingston, 1988a.…”

“…Because the stress process involves, especially during the onset stage, a good deal of sociopsychological interaction and, during the latter stages of reaction and effect, a great deal of physiological activity, the model in Figure 1 is called a sociopsychophysiological model of the stress process. (For a more detailed discussion of the model, see Livingston [1988a] and Livingston & Marshall [ 19901).…”

Biting the bullet: When self-efficacy mediates the stressful effects of COVID-19 beliefs

“…In the case of COVID-19, the effects of health importance seem to be double-barreled. Initially, COVID-19 threatens the individual's health directly, causing individuals who have higher levels of health endorsing behavior to be more stressed [41]. Subsequently, more stress has a negative effect on a person's health itself [42].…”

Psychophysiological Concomitants of Organizational Change in Health Care Personnel: Effects of a Controlled Intervention Study

“…To improve and moderate this anticipated reac tion, we borrowed a model from Karasek and Theorell [14], who have emphasized the importance of engaging the employees in organizational change. Another study has shown that successful stress control programmes pro vide participants with better ways of assessing and under standing stress as well as ways of dealing with the stress experienced [16]. Our goal was to enable and motivate each participant to analyse and understand his or her situ ation using the framework of the programme derived from stress theory.…”