Stress

Everyone experienced stress. Whether it is realizing you have a term paper due in an hour, or something major, like losing a loved one, stress is a part of everyday life. There are hundreds of books on how to deal with stress, and even more therapists who get paid quite nicely to help people avoid or control their stressful lives. But is stress more than just a feeling? Is it more than just an anxiety filled pit in our stomach when we realize we have to food shop for ten houseguests, bring the kids to soccer, and lead our Bible study?

To try and help us answer these questions we will observe and try to answer the following:

1. What is Stress?

2. What Health Issues Arise from Stress?

3. How Can We Better Understand Stress Through Looking At The US Military?

Stress is the "wear and tear" our bodies experience as we adjust to our continually changing environment. (------) It is capable of having physical and emotional effects on us that creates positive or negative feelings. (------) Stress as a positive influence can help coerce us to action and result in a new awareness and an exciting new perspective. (------) On the less desirable side of stress, the negative emotions can cause feelings of distrust, anger, depression and rejection. (------) This can eventually lead to undesirable health problems such as rashes, upset stomaches, headaches, insomnia, ulcers, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. (------) Many times, however, stress can become chronic, and may last for a week or more. This chronic condition often results from humans' ability to project their thoughts into the future, such as when a person keeps a recurrent and stressful thought in his or her mind.

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With chronic stress, the heart beats at a faster pace, the arteries' lining contracts and blood pressure is increased. Thus, with the blood running at a high speed for long periods of times, the lining of blood vessels become prone to suffering injuries. Platelets, whose key goal is to arrest bleeding, reach the injured site and accelerate their ability to form blood clots to heal the area.

And the glucose, triglycerides and cholesterol -- that run in the blood -- tend to accumulate in those injuries, in the coronary arteries or others, paving the way for more serious health problems to arise. As if all this was not bad enough, chronic stress often does not let people think, learn and memorize new things, abilities that are key in a modern and competitive world. And since both negative and positive experiences or emotions produce the secretion of all those substances (glucose, triglycerides and cholesterol, etc.) into the bloodstream, they are both as dangerous. That is why people must learn how to control stress. "We all have different genetic burdens, different ways to perceive, interpret, suffer and think things," said Gutierrez. "So, one same 'stress agent' (emotion or experience) causes different reactions in people."

Analysis with Reference to Soldiers Under Stress

In a society where 24 hours in a day is too little it's not surprising that we have various stress related cases. Then combined with factors like war the stress becomes even more intense. Consider that during war a reserve is drafted. As a man, he may be a husband, father, brother and/or son. When he leaves the family fold to go for training he is leaving behind members of his family who have to deal with the fact that their loved one may well never return. The soldier has to deal with personal fear, the stress of training for physical violence and his deployment to a place far away from his native land. Such factors can all result in a trauma that would be hard to face and thus needs, professional intervention.

The armed forces previously did not deal or recognize forces of stress at work and it was only after the Vietnam War when a whole generation of soldiers showed symptoms of stress by which they were unable to acclimate themselves back into civilian life that the need for special training for stress control was realized.

The Vietnam veterans were seen to become dysfunctional in terms of personality and their inability to forget the war they had fought. Further combined with the recriminations they received the post traumatic stress they underwent was intense. While many did undergo psychiatric treatment many were lost in the system as they became victims of their own inadequacies.

Today, the armed forces and the civilian sector recognize the need for stress management. This can be seen from the latest edition to the U.S. Army field manual (FM) which provides the "tactics, techniques, and procedures required for small-unit leaders to effectively prevent, identify, and manage combat stress when it occurs. This publication contains essential information about combat and combat-related stress. It describes, in layman's terms, techniques to prevent, identify, and treat harmful combat stress reactions at the lowest level or until professional medical assistance is available. It provides a basic understanding of the causes of stress and describes the preventive actions that can be taken to avoid or reduce its harmful effects. It describes how to identify and manage combat stress symptoms when they appear, and provides techniques to prepare units to handle combat stress reactions when they occur. All small-unit leaders should read this publication."

We see from the past that military operations are inevitable from the Civil War to the recent war in Iraq the US has sent its soldiers around the globe in an effort to control the violence. Yet, from that time we have seen an increasing number of soldiers producing combat related stress symptoms giving rise to the question how best veterans and their families can be helped to cope with the reintegration and adjustment problems once the veteran returns home. Some soldiers may display post traumatic stress disorders [PTSD] and other such mental illnesses which have to be contained as early as possible for full recovery. As such the non-profit U.S. Medicine Institute for Health Studies has gone into partnership with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to try to create the best strategy to cope with the problems of the veterans.

The army today has Combat Stress Control [CSC] Units that are equipped with medical personnel who can help soldiers under extreme stress. Most CSC units have three prevention teams, a psychiatrist, social worker, and mental health technicians, and then there is the restoration team that has a psychologist, occupational