Question

Discuss how and when stress impacts your mental health? Discuss how your nutritional habits positively or negatively affect mental stress on your body? Which of the "stage of life" factors have influenced or could potentially impact your mental health? These can be positive or negative influences. Discuss the one(s) that you have experienced or are likely to experience in th near future. What helpful ways (p. 356) do you practice or do you think you should practice to reduce stress in your everyday life for mental health?

Answer 1

1Q).

Stress response is a non-specific response provided by the body against several stressors. Stressor is an agent that produces stress. Examples of stressors include those that cause psychological stress and also physical stressors such as burns, infections, fractures and wounds etc.

Psychological stressors affect the emotional or mental health. It is anything considered as a threat to survival or self-image. A psychological stressor cannot be real but the individual feeling stress experiences it real, but in reality it may not be the truth. For example, “rope mistaken for a snake” induces stress response.

Chronic exposure to the psychological and physical stressor causes mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety.

People who exposed to chronic stress or those with the stress disorders such as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) show characteristic differences in their brain structure. People with stress related mental illnesses have higher white matter to gray matter ratio than those without. The increased white matter indicate the increased axonal composition of the neuron, which results in increased conduction of nerve impulses.

The increased white matter also indicate the alterations in brain connectivity. A stronger connection between the amygdala and hippocampus is also observed in people with mental illnesses, which causes a rapid fear response. A weaker connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus also occurs with chronic stress, which is responsible for mediating moderate responses.

So, the people who expose to chronic stress have the lower ability to calm down and combat the stress response.