Science for Professional Practice: Stress Vulnerability

Stress and Vulnerability in Mental Health

Welcome to this google site for Stress and Vulnerability in Mental Health.

Please work through each page (to access each page please click on each page to make sure you access all of the materials (top left hand corner).

Please consider the exercises and bring your thoughts and any additional questions you have to the zoom session.

Aims and Learning Outcomes...

Consider what is "stress"?

Understand the concepts of stress, vulnerability and the stress vulnerability model.

Understand the concept “high expressed emotion” and how this relates to service users, carers and members of staff working within mental health care.

Begin to apply and understand how the stress vulnerability model applies to service users, carers and health professionals.

Stress

Take some time to consider ...

What things cause you stress?

How do you cope with stress?

Consider some healthy or helpful coping strategies and unhealthy or unhelpful coping strategies.

What are the physical and emotional signs of stress?

What signs of stress do you recognise in others?

Is stress always negative? Can it ever be positive or helpful?

Lazarus and Folkman (1984) Transactional Model of Stress and Coping

Identified the importance of mental process involved in dealing with stress

For example, considering "is this a threat or likely to result in harm or loss?"

Transaction – between the person and the environment

For example, What is the nature of the threat? Do I have the resources to manage the threat?

Individual interpretation determines the perception of the ‘stress’

Positive stress - having the available resources to cope with the stress

Negative stress - Not having the available resources to cope with the stress

(For example, imagine how you might feel if you have revised for an exam and know the likely exam questions, versus how you would feel if you had done no revision and were unaware of the likely exam questions).

Two main stages in perception: Primary appraisal (self-assessment of the threat) and secondary appraisal (self-assessment of coping resources), both involving emotional forecasting

Consider here how the same threat may be perceived very differently by different people depending on their primary and secondary appraisal (for example - a spider!)

You may find it helpful to watch the short video below which also explains the Transactional Model

Please go to the top left menu to select the next section - The Stress Vulnerability Model

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