2.2 The Effects of Stress.
Stress can be defined as mental, emotional, or physical tension brought by internal or
external pressures such as anxiety or overwork. Thus, it is a negative way that a person
frequently responds to such demands or pressures. There are a lot of effects brought by stress
in our life. For instance are physical health, emotional health, academic performance, social
relationship, financial problem and so on. However, the most disastrous effects of stress are
the effects on physical health, emotional health, and academic performance.
According to Lerner (2008), one of the most important effects of stress is on physical
health. Stress can affected our whole body system physically if we do not manage it properly.
This is because “stress cause destructive changes which lower the body's immune system
response and can lead to a variety of diseases and disorders. These include elevated blood
pressure, depression, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and cancer.” (page 4185) Similarly,
Cohen, Kessler et al (1997) agrees that physical health is the major effect of stress too. This is
because “most evidence on the role of stressors in human disease has derived from interest in
stressful life events“ (Adolf Meyer, 1930, page 4). So the statement concluded that, a variety
of physical diseases could arise because of the stressful life events. The stressful life events are
based on the work, study, anxiety problem and so on. All these stressful events created such a
stressful environment to the individual which lead to various diseases and some of the physical
signs of stress are a dry mouth and throat, tight muscles in the neck, shoulders, and back,
chronic neck and back problems, headaches, indigestion, tremors, muscle tics, insomnia, and
fatigue. In addition, Misra, McKean (2000) supports the statement that stress cause the
physical health problem to student. When stress is perceived negatively or becomes excessive,
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students experience physical impairment because they don’t really know they are in stress and
absolutely they have no idea how to manage their stress well. So there is no wonder how the
stress affected their body thoroughly. Flu, sore throat, tight muscles in the neck, shoulders,
back, gastric and so on are the examples of the ordinary diseases could spread on them when
they are in stress.
Furthermore, according to Lerner (2008) another major negative effect of stress is on
emotional health. Emotional or Mental health is an expression of our emotions and signifies a
failure adaptation to the range of demands in life. The stressful life events can lead to all the
failure just by conquering our mind. So it is very important to maintain our mental and
emotional health because once our emotional health was disturbed it can lead to various of
diseases such as depression, anxiety, emotional eating, anger and so on. Besides, Cohen,
Kessler et al (1997) also agrees that another important effect of stress is on emotional health
problem. The individuals label themselves as stressed when their environmental demands are
perceived to exceed their abilities to cope that lead to negative emotional response. The
negative emotional response consequently brought lots of problem to our body in the form of
diseases and disorders. Anxiety, emotional eating, feeling overwhelmed, psychosomatic
illness are some of the examples of diseases and disorders that can affected us when our
emotional health is affected. Actually, emotional health problem is more dangerous than
physical health problem because it can lead to most disastrous effects of all that is committing
suicide. The same goes to the third author Misra, McKean (2000). In their article stated that
four categories describing reactions to stressors are physiological, emotional, behavioral, and
cognitive. So they agree that emotional health problem also affected an individual when they
encountered stress in their daily life. People often notice the emotional effects of stress, but
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aren't always aware of all of the ways stress can have a physical impact. This is because we
ourselves do not really understand what the emotional health is. Actually emotional health is
something that related to our emotion and our feeling. When your emotion is unstable you can
do every stupid things that you could never imagined you will do so such as hurting your own
self. So that is why emotional health problem is more dangerous than physical health problem
because it can lead to serious and dangerous action of you. Emotional signs of stress include
difficulty in concentrating, feeling tense, negative thinking, brooding, worrying, depression,
anxiety, or feelings of worthless. Moreover, according to Avison, Gotlib (1994) stress can lead
to emotional health problem too. It is stated in the article that several investigators have
documented the important roles played by ongoing stressors or chronic strains in affecting
mental health outcomes. These mean that stressors such as overwork, over study and so on
give such negative effects to an individual especially to their emotion. Sometimes too much
pressure from the people surrounding makes the individual feeling worthless when every
blames was put on him. So feeling worthless, unconfident to stand in front of the crowd,
psychosomatic illness and many more bad emotions lead the individual to do something that
could never be expected.
The third disastrous effect of stress to an individual especially students is on academic
performance. Actually this effect affected students beyond their thinking. Misra, McKean
(1994) agrees that academic performance is another important effect of stress. Based on the
article, academic stressors include the student’s perception of the extensive knowledge base
required and the perception of an inadequate time to develop it. Students report experiencing
academic stress at predictable times each semester with the greatest sources of academic stress
resulting from taking and studying for exams, grade competition, and the large amount of
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content to master in a small amount of time. All these sources lead to such great impact on
students’ academic performance. This is because, once they are in stress they have difficulty to
concentrate on their study and finally their result will ruin because they cannot do well in their
exams. So that is how their academic performance shows such negative improvement from
day to day because they cannot manage their stress well.
In conclusion, there are three disastrous effects of stress to an individual. Those
disastrous effects are on physical health, emotional health, and on academic performance. In
my opinion stress actually something that give bad and good effects. By taking stress in
positive way it will give good effects in return. However if we taking stress in negative way
absolutely all we got are the bad effects. This is because if we taking stress in a good way like
as a challenge, we will have more courage to stand out and prove that we manage to endure
the challenge. But if we take it negatively, all those bad effects will just come to us easily. So
make our choice. This is because actually stress is not what happen to us, it's our response to
what happen, and response is something we can choose. If we know the right way to handle
stress definitely all those negative effects of stress can be avoided. However, believing
yourself is the best part of all!
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REFERENCES
Cohen, S ; Kessler, R, C ; Gordon, L, U. (1997). Measuring Stress. A Guide For Health And
Social Scientists. Madison avenue, New York , NY : Oxford University Press, Inc.
Misra, R. McKean, M. ( 2000 ). College Students’ Academic Stress And Its Relation To Their
Anxiety, Time Management, And Leisure Satisfaction. Pages ( 41-43 ).
Lerner, K, L. Lerner, B, W. ( 2008 ). The Gale Encyclopedia of Science. Stress. Pages ( 41854188 ).
Avison, W, R. Gotlib, I, H. ( 1994 ). Stress And Mental Health. Contemporary Issues and
Prospects For The Future. New York, NY: Plenum Publishing Corporation.
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