Everyone needs to take this class. The psychology behind stress and how to cope with it proved so tangibly useful, especially in the life of a student. Continuously with Psychology I have been blown away by how explainable certain phenomenons are, and how tangible the coping strategies can be as well. I wish I had taken this class 6 years ago. I've posted below the study guide for our first exam and one of my reaction papers to an assigned article.
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Reaction Paper #1
10/9/14 The Kiecolt-Glaser article discussed the implications of childhood abuse on a person’s ability to cope with stress. Specifically, this article looked the effect that childhood abuse has on physical responses to stress. It pulled from previous studies which have found that people who experienced child abuse are associated with greater odds of developing age-related diseases as adults. This study pulled participants from a larger study on stress and health and surveyed them about self-reported abuses. The study then assessed various aspects of health such as depression, anxiety, and sleep quality in addition to smoking, alcohol, and diet/physical activity. Stressors were recorded and IL-6 and TNF-α levels were determined . The study concluded that participants who had experienced childhood abuse were more likely to report multiple daily stressors, and also experienced greater circulating IL-6 levels. The study suggested consistency suggesting biological embedding of early life stress—those who had experienced early life stress had amplified responses to naturalistic daily stressors. I found it really interesting that these patients living so far after their initial event of childhood trauma were still being affected by the stress it caused. Having controlled for so many other physical and mental factors, the study seemed to show that a very root cause of this amplified reaction to stressors really might come from the even of abuse. It would be interesting to see what factors can impact this amplified response, such as different types of therapy or early coping mechanisms the patients used more recently to the event. |