Normally people deal with stress routinely in-everyday life. But prolonged unresolved stress situations can contribute to several kinds of stress-related illnesses.
During emotional distress the nervous system, the endocrine system and the immune system get activated. For instance, under stress, our endocrine system produces more epinephrine—a hormone and the blood pressure rise. In fact, these systems keep on working under normal physiological conditions and enable one to cope with short-term stressful events.
However, under prolonged stress, they are continuously activated and health problems begin. But illness may not appear until long after the initial effect of the stressor. The immune system is affected partly by long-term activation of nervous and endocrine system. Its normal functioning is impaired.
Hence, a person’s susceptibility to disease increases during stress. You may have observed that when people are emotionally upset, they fall sick easily. For example, certain students get cough, cold and fever during examination period. When people are unsuccessful in coping with stress and it becomes unmanageable, adverse reactions occur. These are psychological and physiological distress as given below.
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1. Psychological and Behavioral effects:
Anxiety, depression, fatigue, frustration, shame, irritability, bad temper, low self esteem leading to accident proneness, drug taking, alcohol drinking, smoking, impaired speech, nervous laughter, restlessness and trembling. In extreme, cases a person may even contemplate committing suicide. Other effects could be inability to take decisions, lack of concentration, frequent forgetfulness, hypersensitivity to criticism, and mental block.
2. Physiological and Health effects:
Increased blood pressure and heart rate, dryness of mouth, sweating, lump in throat, tingling and numbness in limbs.