In this article we will discuss about Stress of an Individual. After reading this article you will learn about: 1. Meaning of Stress 2. Causes and Management of Stresses 3. Reactions 4. Suggestions to Improve Mental Health.
Meaning of Stress:
When the individual in a society observes a significant discrepancy between the real and idealized self-image, he faces stress situation and experiences anxiety which affects his day-to-day work.
Further, when the demands on a person from the environment are more and his output is less he because of failure suffers from anxiety and stress. Normally when we have a lot of work to do and we are not able to complete the work, we experience a sense of anxiety, unfulfilment, dissatisfaction, worry and finally an unpleasant feeling.
This affects our psychological and mental state and ultimately the capacity to perform. According to Selge (1956) stress is a general adaptation syndrome. Stress may occur due to several factors like lots of pressure from inside or outside, desire to do more work in less time, conflict, tension and anxiety due to several incidental problems, frustrations, excessive demand from the environment and less supply to fulfil one’s needs.
When a person is not able to cope with the environment and maintain a balance, all these factors combinedly or separately produce stress.
Stress produces various physiological and psychological dysfunctions like severe tension, undue fatigue, high blood pressure, rise in blood sugar level, excessive worry. Sometimes it also may lead to heart attack. Persons experiencing stress, but having frustration tolerance capacity may be able to manage it temporarily.
But those who do not have stress tolerance capacity would get excessively upset and angry unreasonably. When it further crosses the limit they will be physically ill in addition to mental illness. According to Bittel (1986) they may collapse mentally and experience a breakdown.
Stress is expressed mainly through anxiety and frustration etc. While anxiety is experienced on some anticipated harm or danger, frustration is caused due to obstruction or blocking of goal oriented behaviour. ‘Anxiety is characterized by a sense of dread, a forbidding and persistent apprehension of the future for reasons that are sometimes unknown to the individual”.
Causes of stress and unhealthy mental condition of the organisational and industrial workers are varied.
Conflict for power, adverse decisions affecting the workers, unhealthy and excessive competitions, lots of pressure in work front, instability in organisational structure, frequent transfers, misbehaviour from the management and colleagues, unhealthy, personal relationship with coworkers and family members, frequent quarrels and back bittings, increased mechanisation and boredom etc. are some of the note-worthy causes.
Further, massive changes in social structure, continuing technological growth, inflation and generation gap among the youngs and olds, the tendency to revolt against the authority due to gap in communication, excessive desire for power prestige, recognition, desire for self esteem and status, lack of job feedback, and job security, lack of knowledge about one’s performance, economic problems, unrealistically high level of aspiration and personal goal, family problems renewed motherhood divorce and no child, unfavourable relationship with the group etc. and allied factors produce pressures and stress.
Thus the life style of the individuals become very complex and complicated. Their mental health is polluted with anxiety, frustration and stress. Everybody now speaks of pressure of work, pressure of political parties on executives, pressures of trade unions on management or the vice-versa, the pressure of needs and finally pressure of conscience. Thus one experiences stress in the modern world in some form or other.
Slight stress is a common experience and stress or anxiety upto a certain degree help in performance by improving learning. But when conditions of professional work generate moderate to high degree of stress in our day-to-day activities, people develop various symptoms of anxiety which become definitely harmful to job performance and which invariably affects mental health.
On the contrary, when there is no stress, due to lack of desire and motivation to perform, performance becomes low. Although reasonable amount of stress is necessary to meet the challenges and requirements of work situation, excessive stress interferes with performance.
The individual looses the ability to adjust, to cope and to be dynamic in his approach. He suffers from no decision making or irratic decision making capacity.
He becomes nervous, irritable and develops chronic worry, looses patience and initiative. People suffering from stress become very uncooperative, aggressive, quarrelsome and sometimes to avoid stress take excessive alcohol and drugs. Others, suffer from repeated illness, take long leave or remain absent from job.
If the job situation appears to be very stressful to the person he quits the job and sometimes may not like to work for several years. He just cannot think of doing any work but he spends his time in a very depressed mood. He just and simply avoids work because of stress.
A popular person has usually less stress than an unpopular person who faces problems every day without being able to solve them amicably. Mostly negative, culturally undesirable life events increase stress.
But recent studies also show that the individual’s social system may reduce the effect of negative life events on the person and hence been if he experiences more negative life events and failures, he may not be so stressed as compared to another, who has less social supports. So it is argued that the social support system should be better to cope with stressful life events.
When the internal body system is unable to tolerate too much stress and adjust he may suffer from various physical dysfunctions, hysterical symptoms and psychosomatic disorders. Some western studies have been conducted by Cooper and Payne (1978) on the association of stress with psychological symptoms.
Mostly conflict, ambiguity and overload relating to the predominant role and task characteristics are observed. Panda (1983) in India has observed that a major factor of stress in an organisation is mental overload. Even in the same situation people may differ in their reaction to stress.
Two persons have failed in the departmental promotional examination and hence have not been able to get promotion. But one commits suicide or quits the job. While the other perceives it as a temporary phase and prepares for the next examination with more sincerity and dedication.
Thus, how the stress situation is perceived and evaluated has a lot of say in how it affects one’s physical and mental health adversely. Tolerance and resolve of stress in a healthy way is extremely desirable to make the employees mentally and physically sound and healthy. It can improve their concentration and attention in work. Lack of concentration is one of the major causes of excessive stress and anxiety.
Thus situational factors, personal factors and social factors like social support either independently or through interaction produce stress and pollute mental health of industrial and organisational workers.
Through some recent researchers argue that social support can counterbalance the physical and psychological impacts of negative life experiences and painful events, their studies suffer from several limitations and drawbacks.
Some studies conducted by Mishra and Bhatacharya (1984), Dogra and Mishra (1988), Mishra (1989) on the executives and non executives of public and private sector industries and organisations of Orissa suggest the need to conduct more research in this area and evaluate the functional relationship between work environment, work culture and psychological well being.
Individual difference is observed in the threshold of stress tolerance. Some people have less frustration and high stress tolerance than others. Some people are quickly upset by slight downs while others are not perturbed but stay cool and calm under stressful situations, unless it prolongs for a longer period. Such people are of relaxed category and show less adverse and problematic reactions to stress.
Causes and Management of Stresses:
Due to lack of stress tolerance and many other related factors the mental health of some people is affected which further affects level of production, life style and efficiency.
Since mental Alness is created mainly due to situational and environmental factors, steps should be taken to avoid and reduce the occurrence of anxiety and frustration caused at least by situational factors. By and large, the following steps should be taken to reduce stress and anxiety. Work leads to engagement and through engagement a lot of stress is reduced.
In addition to the daily paid work some light work can keep the person engaged and provide relaxation. Reading, writing, knitting, embroidery and other handicrafts, painting, signing and dancing, physical, exercise, playing musical instruments, regular engagement in games and sports, etc. can reduce boredom, create a sense of self actualisation and build confidence in the person.
Thus the person should be engaged in some jobs in which he is interested or interest should be created.
Among on the job conditions, bad working environment like poor illumination, bad house keeping, excessive noise coming from gigantic machines all the time, transfer, over work, change in working hours, dismissal and suspension, warning, lack of decision, inadequate capacity to fulfil one’s responsibility, high achieving boss dictatorial spouse inferiority complex, frustration due to improper interpersonal relationship with complex, frustration due to improper communication, monotonous and meaningless work, lack of job satisfaction, interpersonal conflict and play major role in the production of stress.
Off the job conditions relate to familial problems like marital discord, divorce, separation, problems related to children’s health education and employment, property problems, isolation and lonenincss, etc. However, during work, working relationship mostly causes stress.
Reactions to Stress:
The reactions to stress can be categorized under three heads:
(i) Physical
(ii) Behavioural and
(iii) Psychological.
Undue fatigue, headache, sweating, various types of psychophysiological disorders like migrane headache, peptic ulcer, high blood pressure, asthma, coronary diseases come under the physical reactions to stress. The psychological reactions to stressful work conditions and works lacking quality and satisfaction are undue boredom, unpleasant feeling, interpersonal conflict, irritability, impatience and inability to relax.
The behavioural disorders produced by stress arc usually quarrelsomeness, lack of efficiency and competency, low quality of performance, lack of concentration, absenteeism, irregularity, lack to job satisfaction and frequent change in job. Persons who are very sincere and perfect and get their only satisfaction in life from job and work show major mental breakdown when confronted with stress and anxiety.
Thus, dissatisfaction with one’s work and on the job conditions in found to be stressful to many people as observation shows. Dissatisfaction breeds discontentment. So the employees prefer to withdraw and avoid their job. They avoid work through many pretentions like being irregular, remaining absent frequently, doing work without interest.
Lack of dedication and motivation, etc., job dissatisfaction also produces conflict, frustration, anguish and frequent irritability. Such physical, behavioural and psychological feelings adversely affect the mental health of the workers.
In today industries and organisations and in the domestic front due to the repetitive nature of work and specialization in work, work has become very monotonous. Since most part of the work is being done by machines and computers man has to little utilize his brain and initiative.
Some low level of skills are required at the lowest level to manage the work. Their special qualities and creativeness, their intrinsic interest, tact and initiative, etc. are not utilised.
Thus, a sense of vacuum is crated in them and they feel alienated from the job. Work to many appears as meaningless, dull and uninteresting. Particularly people with average or higher intelligence are not able to adjust with such type of work and a sense of boredom, creates unpleasant feeling and stress.
They lead a poorly adjusted life showing undue anxiety, tension, hostility, contempt, irritability and aggressiveness, etc. which usually people in the society and coworkers do not appreciate.
The work must be meaningful and motivating requiring tact, initiative, intelligence and creativity so that the person can have self actualisation conducive for good mental health. The adverse mental health of such persons affect their relationship with family members, peers, close associates and friends.
Similarly middle level and higher level managers and executives also suffer from poor mental health and lack of decisiveness due to the above factors along with some other factors like competition and strong dedication to job.
Those who like their job too much, arc highly competitive, time bound, duty bound, result and action oriented, with commitments to duty also suffer from poor mental health. In the domestic front work becomes monotonous due to use of modern Gadgets like Washing Machine, Over Mixer, Fridge, etc.
The foregoing discussions on stress and mental health lead to one basic conclusion, i.e. lack of adjustment on the part of the low level, middle level and high level employees leads to the onset of mental stress.
Of course it is a fact that on the job conditions, traditions, cultural social values and morals are related to tire quality of work, the organisational climate, the supervisory role from one country to another produce stress.
Since the Indian social conditions, value system, culture, child rearing practices are different from that of the western countries one has to approach the causes of stress and poor mental health of the individual from a slightly different angle as such factors also influence their behaviour in every sphere.
Adequate research in this area should be conducted in Indian organisations and families, social setups instead of basing one’s views on the findings of the western societies alone. Observations and suggestions of many researches indicate significant positive correlation between good quality of work life, good life style and judicious mental health.
Suttle (1977) has viewed that by improving the quality of working life, the mental health of the workers is improved. He holds that improved quality of work life leads to healthier, more satisfied and more productive employees and more efficient, adaptive and profitable organisations.
Quality of working life refers briefly to the objective, situational, on the job environmental conditions plus the subjective experience of the worker related to such work. Obviously the mental health conditions under the quality of working life vary between the developed and developing countries.
The quality of work should be such that it should be able to satisfy important personal needs of the worker through the job. While work alienation leads to poor mental health, work involvement because of good quality work leads to good mental health.
Good work experience satisfies the important needs of the individual and hence works as a positive motivator or reinforcer. Kanungo (1979, 1981, 1982) has viewed the concept of work involvement and work alienation as opposite poles of the same phenomena.
Many western and some Indian researchers have found the relationship between stress, psychological symptoms and poor mental health. The psychological symptoms are by and large conflict, overloading and ambiguity. Panda (1983) conducted a study on Indian organisations and found that mental overload is a prominent factor in producing stress among organisational workers.
The basic fundamental point to be kept in view is that the job with which one is engaged if satisfies the needs of the individual, the degree of poor mental health due to on the job conditions is reduced. Work should be considered as a pleasure and not a burden.
There should not be any resistant for the work one is doing. Rapid social change in most of the societies of the world, changing work culture, unfriendly work habits should be properly controlled so that the stress management can be possible.
Suggestions to Improve Mental Health and Manage Stress:
A member of the society or the worker engaged in an organisation or industry cannot leave his personal problems with the gate guard and enter into the work space with a free and relaxed mind. He goes there as a total person with all his personal, familial and socio-cultural problems.
Socio-cultural background, academic qualification, training and past experience, attitude and temperament all taken together influence him while doing his job. It is impossible to segregate these factors. Thus by promoting personal and social satisfaction of the individuals, their mental health can be improved.
By planning, organising, and coordinating work and motivating people to perform better in their respective jobs, the best can be extracted from them. Job satisfaction has to do a lot with mental health of persons and vice versa. Organisational and personal stress is to be reduced to improve the mental health of the individuals.
(1) Challenge,
(2) Confrontation,
(3) Check, and
(4) Cooperation.
(1) Challenge:
Challenges in life should be faced boldly stress is induced and health is affected when a person meets a challenge from his environment, near or remote. In such a situation he has to face the challenge boldly instead of withdrawing from the situation.
A man’s son is to take admission in a medical college which has been his long standing dream. But he is unable to pay the huge capitation fee. Instead of giving up, he should try and try to manage the funds and definitely he would meet the challenge.
(2) Confrontation:
In our day-to-day life, we meet a lot of challenges and instead of withdrawing or breaking down we should try to solve them constructively with positive thinking. The feeling “I cannot do it”, it is impossible “should be given up and I can do it, definitely do it”, should be enter our mind. Thus, one has to confront the problematic situation with courage and determination.
Sometimes back when I had a severe right-hand middle finger injury, I was requested by my publisher to revise the Social Psychology book written by me. At that time I thought perhaps I would not be able to write any more. But I mustered enough courage and determination to face this challenge.
Even while doing this revision work today my fingers are not properly working and I am facing difficulty while writing. But my determination and will power to revise the book at any cost has made me face this challenge successfully and confront the situation. I’m sure I will complete this work soon.
Therefore instead of withdrawing from the stress provoking situation one should face it boldly and constructively to avoid conflict and displeasure. When you find a thief entering your house you should try to inform the police or confront him with courage instead of being scared. A lot of stress induced in our day-to-day life can be reduced through confrontation.
(3) Check:
It is another innovative technique used to avoid stress. One should try with confidence to check the stress provoking situation or control it through one’s own efforts. If one becomes unsuccessful in an interview or examination, he should try and try till he is successful.
Stress produced by failures in life can be checked through sincere efforts to be successful. It is rightly said that failure is the pillar to success and everyone who meets failure should accept this boldly.
(4) Cooperation:
Finally, one should try to solve the problems of life which put pressure on him and create stress by trying to adjust, to cooperate and cope. Examples under this category are amply found in our daily life. Adjustment is the most successful way of dealing with various problems.
Persons who are able to cope and adjust with a situation quickly are not only successful in life, but also popular and sociable. On the other hand, those who fail to cope with the changing circumstances of life and events of their environment are unsuccessful and unpopular. They have thus unrewarding experiences and they don’t enjoy life.
Evil thoughts, evil desires, jealousy, anger, vindictiveness and all other negative emotions affect the health of a person both physically and mentally. Hence to have a sound mind and healthy body, to have rewarding experiences in life one has to give up negative thoughts and bring in positive thinking in oneself as well as in others.
This can ultimately lead to a peace, prosperous and creative society with lots of healthy people as its members. Management of stress in day-to-day life needs a positive approach towards life, and day-to-day happenings.
Give up negative thoughts and ideas, look at the brighter side of the event than emphasizing the darker and negative aspects, face the challenges of life boldly and positively without withdrawing from it, try to cope and adjust with the situation in a progressive manner, manage anger and aggression reasonably, look at things from someone else’s stand point, prepare a daily programme of work so that it would be more enjoyable, satisfiable and less boring, give up the wish and effort to do excessive work in a very short period, help in stress management. Balancing one’s aspiration with his achievement level, making one-self feel comfortable in job whether at home or elsewhere, engagement in meaningful work, facing competition from realistic stand point, proper management of life style keep to blood pressure and blood sugar level optimum.
Engaging oneself in Pranayam, yoga and other body exercises recommended by experts, trying to cooperate with the situation as much as possible, making one’s daily work more meaningful valuable and goal oriented, etc. reduce stress. The above steps can reduce stress to a great extent and make one healthy, happy and relaxed in life.