Talk:Psychological stress

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2019 and 15 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): "robin ramlall".

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 September 2021 and 18 November 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mbarekzia.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 August 2021 and 9 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lauren.8925.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:49, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Needs work

This article needs work. It reads more like someone's homework than an encyclopedia. The content seems OK—I am not an expert—but there are a number of tonal and stylistic problems, including:

• Poor structure: odd section order, frequent use of "see ... [at top/above]"
• POV/tone issues: "as most people believe it to be", "[m]any psychologists are currently interested", the "Common Misconceptions" section, use of "us" and "we"
• Citation issues: "[Research has/Researchers have] found", "[a] study ... has found", etc
• Failure of parallel construction: both in list definitions ("This is when" vs "Repression occurs when") and in discussion of examples (frequent and arbitrary use of "[the/an] individual", "a person" "humans", "one", "us" and "we", etc)
• Technically correct but poor sentence structure: overuse of "[noun]/[noun]" constructions and sentences beginning with "This", overwrought constructions ("what one could call as"), punctuation issues

If it were merely a question of the latter, I would be happy to copyedit this article, but I fear it has deeper-seated issues and may require restructuring, if not complete rewriting. 184.78.4.160 (talk) 21:50, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Looked up "stress" in an online dictionary; came up with "no result". Googled "stress"; wiki: "ambiguity of word". I think stress is a combination of tension, pain and fatigue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.246.61.98 (talk) 18:17, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I think in particular the last paragraph of the introduction is pretty sloppy

---

Humans experience stress, or perceive things as threatening, when they do not believe that their resources for coping with obstacles (stimuli, people, situations, etc.) are enough for what the circumstances demand. When we think the demands being placed on us exceed our ability to cope, we then perceive stress.--------

If it isn't stress until after our ability to cope is exceeded then what are we coping with in the first place?173.174.237.80 (talk) 11:12, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

The first paragraph in 'disease' doesn't make sense. It gives an example of stress increasing disease while claiming it is perception that is the causative factor. Additionally it contradicts the 'health' section where it is claimed that it is stress (with no mention of perception) that increases disease.Hollth (talk) 06:14, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Reference 16 is erroneously paraphrased in the article giving the wrong idea completely. Carelessly done work and misleading. Spyglasses (talk) 15:10, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

POV

The article incorporates a suggestive view which favours the positive outcomes of stress diminishing the negative aspects, symptoms and causes, in such way does not represent a balanced view on the subject. --Aleksd (talk) 12:11, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

When I read the article, I see both positive and negative aspects discussed. I don't see what you see; I see a balanced article. Perhaps you could give suggestions for how you believe the article could be improved. Which specific paragraphs need attention? HairyWombat 18:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I've added one negative aspect/outcome of stress by discussing how college students lack healthy eating and activity when under stressful conditions. I have referenced two studies, one based in South Korea and another in the United States that shows that male and female college students engage in an unhealthy lifestyle in general by skipping breakfast and consuming unhealthy foods and drinks. The addition is below the "other effects" section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bosrabbit2 (talk • contribs) 00:46, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Relationship between stress, clinical depression, and suicide

Do we need to mention these combination(s) of topics in the main article? --Carrot Lord (talk) 23:30, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Stress causes HIV???

"Four of the most common diseases that result from stress are clinical depression, cardiovascular disease, human immunodeficiency virus, and cancer" - stress is the cause of HIV, you must be kidding! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.155.121.219 (talk) 22:17, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Poorly written article, someone please rewrite it... I would if I could do it better :)
Examples:

• "The initiation of cancer typically starts off with an unstoppable cell growth and division, leading to a tumor." - immune system and/or doctors often stop or reverse it.
• "When the body's energy is used to respond to minor (or major) stressors, the immune system's ability to function properly is compromised" - what kind of "energy" are we exactly talking about here?
• "They found that stress plays as an activator for certain processes that can lead to diseases such as antiviral defense." - antiviral defense is a disease??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.155.121.219 (talk) 22:37, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

You are quite right! I have now rewritten everything that you mentioned. (I hope it's okay that I formatted your comments, it was a bit hard to read.) Lova Falk talk 09:04, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

 Fixed

Brock University Class Project

Hello, I am part of a group of individuals who have been working to add information based on communication to this Wikipedia page. If you want more information, here is the link to the class project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:Brock_University/NUSC_1P10_Professional_and_Therapeutic_Communications_%28Fall_2014%29 This page explains how we have built and worked over the term to make these edits, with weekly checkpoints. If you would like to see the work that we have contributed over the term, here is a link to our group sandbox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sf13yg/StressPsychological There will be a few more edits to follow today, with regards to coping mechanisms and responses to stress. If you have any questions, just let one of us know. Tf14rg (talk) 08:08, 05 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi There, I am also a student at Brock University and I have been working towards improving the section on coping mechanisms, I will be moving my edits into the article today, if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me directly. Sf13yg (talk) 20:36, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi guys, I've been assigned to review your page by Lynn. A few initial things to consider:

• The use of bulleted lists should be avoided according to the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lists if the information can be presented in paragraph form.
• There is a few places where a clearer citation would be helpful. It may be just a matter of making the supporting evidence clearer. I've put the 'citation required' in those places
• On the Talk Page, edits/additions are supposed to be justified / explained. Our group is also guilty of having most of this discussion on our sandbox talk page, rather than the article talk page (which is right here!)
• As Adam pointed out on our article, the source material for medical articles have a higher standard than other wikipedia articles. I think you guys have some good sources, but it is something to keep in mind when reviewing the places where I've added 'citation required'.

--Aw14uw (talk) 19:21, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Feedback on Edits

Hello! I am going to be giving some feedback in hopes to enhance your article. But first I would like to congratulate you guys on doing an excellent job with this article! You were able to consistently keep it broad in its coverage, and the information provided was relevant to each subheading/category it was under. Transition into each topic (heading) was exceptional; this made the article very easy to follow as if it were in chronological order! Needless to say, the organization of the headings in the article was on point...very well done. Your sources are credible, which makes the information provided verifiable, which is another good article criteria according to Wikipedia. I must also add how impressed I am with how "communication" was incorporated into this article (as it was the sole purpose of this assignment). You went above and beyond with this addition (of communication) by not only mentioning the verbal and nonverbal methods of communication, but you also mentioned how communication relates to society, and the physiological component...in other words, amazing job! You guys are very creative by being able to incorporate this obscure topic in relation to stress. Your article is also "Stable" because it does not change significantly from day to day, as evidenced by ongoing edit wars or content disputes. Congratulations! Rebecca L 04:44, 10 November 2014 (UTC)Rebecca L 17:52, 12 November 2014 (UTC) So, I have attempted to make a table, but unfortunately I was unable too... but I did attach an image of my feedback for this article. Please refer to the following image on the right hand side to view my feedback! :) Great job once again! Rebecca L 00:40, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Table outlining Rebecca L Feedback for this article

03:33, 10 November 2014 (UTC)Rebecca L — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Hi there!

I am also going to be giving some feedback on your edits! First off, congratulations! You have all contributed so much to this article and have made it that much better. I have read through your talk page and acknowledged all of the work you have put in from start to finish; very impressive. Thank you for bolding all of your edits on the User page, this made it very easy for me to see the actual work you put into the article. The Major life events section was educational and informative. Good information was given, however, a few things could use editing. The statement: "Research has found major life events are somewhat rare to be major causes of stress, due to its rare occurrences." sounds kind of awkward and different words could be used. Instead, you could say, "Research has found that major life events are somewhat rare to be major causes of stress, due to the fact that they are rare occurrences." Also, try making the first two sentences into one with a semi-colon: "Common examples of major life events include: marriage, going to college, death of a loved one, birth of a child, etc.; these events can be either positive or negative". The Daily hassles/microstressors, and mental inhibitions/disavowal mechanisms sections were done so well! I felt enlightened and impressed after reading the information. The introduction that was added to Coping mechanisms really improved the section. The reader will now have an idea of what will be discussed in the section and a bit of background information, instead of just jumping right into the facts like before. Under Prevention and resilience building, there is a small edit to be made. “Although many techniques have traditionally been developed to deal with the consequences of stress considerable research has also been conducted on the prevention of stress, a subject closely related to psychological resilience-building.” – there needs to be a comma after the phrase “Although many techniques have traditionally been developed to deal with the consequences of stress”. The amount of information that was added to Responses To Psychological Stress That Affect Communication is very notable! Without your information this section would lack many important details. Your group saw the potential to improve this section and did a great job doing so. Note: your headings and subheadings should be consistent – Wikipedia headings should only have the first letter capitalized. Overall, this article was edited very well! The edits that were made seem to meet Wikipedia’s “Good article criteria”. All edits that were made were written well, and were clear and concise. The edits made to the article are verifiable as your sources seem to be reliable, and in-text citations and a reference list were provided. The article is broad, you managed to address main topic aspects and stay focused on the topics. The article is also neutral and seems to represents all points of view fairly. One last suggestion would be to add a relevant image! Congratulations on your outstanding edits! Kg13la (talk) 01:40, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey guys! I have been assigned to give you some feedback on your edits for the psychological stress article. After reviewing your talk page and seeing all your ideas it is extremely evident that you all put a tremendous amount of thought and effort in your edits, and I would like to congratulate you on all hard work and improving this article. It is fantastic that you were able to split up the sections that you thought needed improvement amongst yourselves, in the summary section of your talk page I was able to gather that you definitely used credible sources, and you did an excellent job citing them. This made the article overall a more credible source for other readers to reference when doing research on this topic. I also noticed that you were able to keep your ideas coherent and well organized so that myself and any other Wikipedians can follow your thought process and refer to the changes you have made and input opinion of where you can improve. One suggestion I do have is adding visuals to your sections, this will help readers further identify with the concepts you discuss and will add more to the goods article criteria of Wikipedia.

The Major life Events section I suggest that you add the effect of major life event when you introduce the possible examples. For instances “common examples of major life events that contribute to stress… and so on, are the following: list of examples”. This may help the reader further identify with this article. The Daily hassles/microstressors, and mental inhibitions/disavowal mechanisms sections, you did a wonderful job editing and I think your citations are a great contributions, this helps the reader find where you sourced your information from and allows them to further research this subtopic. One thing I would suggest is making the examples listed in the first paragraph a bulleted list as this would help the reader follow along better with the ideas presented in this section. The “Coping mechanisms” section, I think it was well written and maintained a neutral stance throughout. I believe you can try and rephrase the “passive aggression” section under the subheading of active mechanisms to make it flow better and become less choppy. I suggest maybe “acting in a hostile or resentful manner towards others caused by an individual indirectly dealing with their anxiety and negative thoughts/feelings”. The section on “Responses to Psychological Stress That Affect Communication” exhibits good criteria, I believe that the citations added in each subsection make it more verifiable. This section is evidentially neutral and covers a broad range of ides for possible effects of communication. Something I would suggest you fix would be adding citations to the section of “stressful social experiences that affect communication” other than that I think this section has definitely made a contribution to the article as a whole. Overall I think you guys did a great job editing this article, you were able to pick what sections needed the most improvement and were most relevant and made them much more credible. Fantastic coverage and sources! I wish you the best in your final edits Jm14lp (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you all for your recommendations on the future editing of this page. I am very happy with the work our group as contributed to this article. There is some editing that can be improved, thanks to you all for pointing these things out to us. It is difficult to post and edit and make it flawless and you all are probably experiencing this also. Thank you for putting the time in, to read and show some possible edits for our group, these will definitely be put into consideration. Md13sd (talk) 19:08, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Brock University: feedback

First of all, hi Tf14rg and welcome to Wikipedia!

This can be a confusing place (trust me, I'm relatively inexperienced myself and there is a bewildering variety of guidelines to absorb and follow!) I've covered some broad areas below that I think are worth considering with regard to your project work.

Format

Section headings should mostly be lower-case with an initial capital, unless they contain proper nouns/names. For example, Health and disease rather than Health and Disease. The relevant guideline is WP:SECTIONCAPS. Sometimes it looks a bit odd when you're used to reading book and article titles that use a different convention. The main idea is consistency and ease of reading.

Don't attach inline citations to a section heading, like this:

===Health promotion<ref>{{cite book|last1=Potter|first1=Patricia|title=Canadian Fundamentals of Nursing|date=2014|publisher=Elsevier|location=Toronto|pages=472–488|edition=5}}</ref>===

Instead, cite at the point where you make a statement that requires evidence to support that what you're saying represents the best current thinking on the subject.

Some of your content is presented as a list, with indented paragraphs using the ':' character. I'd encourage you to try to incorporate that content into more traditional format, a subheading followed by several paragraphs for example.

Sources

When contributing to articles about healthcare, medicine, nursing etc it's especially important to consider the sources you use. Recent, reliable sources are almost always preferred (unless older sources are of historical interest). Some guidelines exist to help you choose which references make the grade and which do not; one such is WP:MEDRS. This particular article is part of the Psychology WikiProject, and they have their own essay on choosing and citing sources.

One area where this came slightly unstuck in your contributions was this edit (click the link). In it you introduce a reference but cite the authors as Snyder and Lefcourt. In fact, the volume is edited by Snyder and the section you're citing was written by Lefcourt. This is made a little more obvious because you refer to the "book by Snyder" in the text:

:The book, Coping with Stress by Snyder suggests that this perspective-taking humor is the most effective humor in relieving stress due to its ability to distance oneself from the situation of great stress<ref>{{cite book|last1=Snyder|first1=C.R.|last2=Lefcourt|first2=Herbert M.|title=Coping With Stress|date=2001|publisher=Oxford University|location=New York|pages=68-88}}</ref>.

This might better be expressed as:

Lefcourt (2001) suggests that this perspective-taking humor is the most effective due to its ability to distance oneself from the situation of great stress.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Lefcourt|first1=H. M.|editor1-last=Snyder|editor1-first=C. R.|title=Coping with Stress: Effective People and Processes.|date=2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn=0198029950|pages=68-92|chapter=The Humor Solution}}</ref>

Always try to include an ISBN, DOI, or PMID to your sources—it makes a big difference when trying to locate them later. I've added a talk page reference list below, so that you can see how each version will look:

References

Voice

Be careful to maintain what we like to call encyclopaedic tone (maybe just because it makes us sound important!) If you start using personal pronouns ('you' or 'I' in particular) you've probably strayed out of it:

Suggested strategies to improve stress management include:

1. Regular Exercise – set up a fitness program, 3–4 times a week

2. Support Systems – to listen, offer advice, and support you

...

8. Stress Management in Your Workplace – organize a new system, switch tasks to reduce own stress.

This is also an example of advice-giving, which is something we're quite careful to avoid. Among the list of things Wikipedia is not: it's not an instruction manual. We're about trying to describe the article's topic in plain language, with accuracy and reliable sources. The list claims, in effect, that exercising 3-4 times per week reduces stress. While this is almost certainly true, such claims should always be backed up with a good source.

Don't be daunted

You guys, be encouraged by your first experience here. You did a lot of things right. Most importantly, you engaged the community to help you improve the article. There's a saying among employers: "Hire for fit, train for skill." In other words, attitude, patience, and the ability to cooperate and take feedback are far more important than whether or not your first edits were a work of art!

I'll leave this page on my watchlist, so feel free to ask for help if you need it. Cheers, Basie (talk) 03:09, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello Basie, these suggestions all fall under the section "Coping mechanisms" in which I edited and therefore I will take your feedback. I really appreciate this feedback as I am a very recent editor of Wikipedia. However, your suggestions are crucial to follow as they are general standards of Wikipedia and will edit them shortly. I apologize greatly for all my mistakes. Sf13yg (talk) 22:43, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Oops! I didn't mean to single you out by any means, sorry. They were just things that occurred from a quick read of the article. Please don't feel the need to apologise. Cheers, Basie (talk) 22:46, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I suggest to merge Chronic stress into this article (and to leave a redirect), because there is very large overlap between the articles and this article is the more general one, without any clear distinction.

In particular, the first sentence of "Chronic stress" reads: "Chronic stress is the response to emotional pressure suffered for a prolonged period over which an individual perceives he or she has no control." This clearly refers to psychological stress. And it offers no clear distinction in terms of a duration that would be required for calling it "chronic".

The article "Chronic stress" is a mere stub, and a merge wouild be rather straighforward. --Chris Howard (talk) 13:51, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea to me. --LynnMcCleary (talk) 15:42, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Opposition to Merge proposal:

Chronic stress is a specific psychological and physiological condition that results from prolonged exposure to high levels of psychological stress. There are other articles that deal with other specific conditions that result from particular effects of psychological stress, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. It is helpful to the reader to have separate articles dealing with these very different conditions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.155.226.3 (talk) 03:43, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

@204.155.226.3: I agree that the medical literature often speaks of chronic stress and its effects, emphasizing that they differ from those of other stress. However, the definition you give is not the same definition used in the "Chronic stress" article, and more generally speaking there are exist verious definitions of what "chronic stress" is. For example, Hammen et al (link) cite various definitions using durations of 4 weeks, 6 months, or 12 months. A University of Maryland reference (link) distinguishes between short-term (acute) or long-term (chronic) stress with "common acute stressors" and "common chronic stressors", respectively. One essay (link) emphasizes that the concepts of "acute" and "chronic" stress are overlapping: for example, repeated everyday traffic jam situation may be seen as acute and/or as chronic. So there's a difficulty in defining what exactly is meant by chronic stress. (Also the ICD-10 or the DSM-5 codes have entry unequivocally standing for "chronic stress" as such only, to my knowledge.)

Another problem is that the "Chronic stress" article is by far not as good as what is explained, for example, in the section Stress (psychological)#Health and disease.

All-in-all, I would rather suggest to create a new section "Acute and chronic stress" within the "Stress (psychological)" article to address these matters, rather than trying to work with two separate articles for the moment. --Chris Howard (talk) 21:49, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

is this a "how to" guide?

the "Communicating with someone who is stressed" sections seems more like a "how to" guide, than encyclopedia content. Any objections if I remove that section? Spacecowboy420 (talk) 07:46, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I was about to suggest that. I've tagged the section; if no one objects, I think it should be removed. --Joshualouie711^talk 00:29, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

I just pulled the trigger and removed that section. Arinelle (talk) 11:44, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Are stressors really neutral?

Some reference "Generating eustress by challenging employees: Helping people savor their work" says that stressors are neutral and it's just the context that makes the person respond positively or negatively to them. I'm having trouble swallowing that theory! In the case of a natural disaster or the death of a loved one, I don't see how one could claim that anyone could have a positive response to that. If you support this theory, could you clarify the section, maybe by providing examples? If you don't, could you provide references that go against it? Arinelle (talk) 11:54, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Apps / Web-Interventions

I added a paragraph in Good Faith on apps/web-interventions which was deleted by User_talk:MrOllie as WP:UNDUE. It is not clear to me why - given the thousands of apps available to prevent/manage stress this paragraph was reverted. It is a well-balanced paragraph that links to multiple studies describing digital stress interventions. You are free to add more references if you know more than me about this topic, but it is counterproductive to delete a stub on this topic because believe it or not, it is an emerging stress management approach millions of people are using. --66.207.217.61 (talk) 17:44, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Apps and Web-Based Interventions

In recent years, a multitude of Web-based interventions and mobile apps to prevent and cope with stress and anxiety have been developed and scientifically evaluated. These apps sometimes use mindfulness (meditation techniques) as an approach to prevent and reduce stress and anxiety, or cognitive behavior therapy. Certain serious games also have been shown to reduce stress and anxiety.

Spamming it across multiple articles places any good faith editing in doubt. This appears to be promotion. --Ronz (talk) 17:49, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

References

"Stress is a type of psychological pain"

That currently the second sentence. What is the evidence for that statement? Who says so? Is that a metaphor or is there some biological basis to that statement. Notgain (talk) 12:02, 24 July 2019 (UTC)