Stress dynamics and treatment across physiological, psychological, and workplace contexts

Appley, M. H, and Richard Trumbull. Dynamics of Stress Physiological, Psychological and Social Perspectives. Boston, MA: Springer U.S., 2012. Print.

This book covers the dynamics of stress as the title suggests via a theoretical lens. One idea they cover early on is parallel systems. Generally, there is an acceptance of only three parallel systems. They are social, psychological and physiological. They function to maintain an individual as well as provide whatever means available to deal with stressors over the individuals lifetime. Stress comes to in numerous ways. Some people may deal with stress better than others may. This could from the person having more at their disposable to handle such stress. Things like material wealth, healthy body, and strong support system could all make excellent ways to cope with stress. The more a person has of these resources, the more theoretically they could cope with trauma and stress. This book covers other topics pertaining to stress and theory including life cycles and other topics of interest like transactional models for individual differences.

Arnetz, Bengt B, and Rolf Ekman. Stress in Health and Disease. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2006. Print.

Scientists have noted in recent times the detrimental effect stress has on the human body. This book seeks to look into why people should care about stress- what intrinsic behaviors in organizations lead to stressful workplaces. In one of the chapters, it covers motivation and its ability to stimulate and sustain behavior. The author suggests important factors that hep to contribute to positive job attitude and thus reduction of workplace stress is recognition, achievement, work itself, advancement, responsibility, and growth. People at work may often feel the effects of stress because they have no room to develop or learn new skills. Many of the jobs in America for example have low levels of recognition and lack the opportunities for advancement, thus diminishing motivation and increasing stress levels. Stress levels may impair how one does a job properly and may decrease productivity for a business or organization as well as diminish quality of work.

Bryant, Richard et al. 'Treating Acute Stress Disorder: An Evaluation of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Supportive Counseling Techniques: American Journal of Psychiatry: Vol 156, No 11'. American Journal of Psychiatry 156.11 (1999): 1780. Web. 31 July 2015.

This is an informative article from 1999 covering the topic of acute stress disorder (and PTSD) and its treatment. The objective of this article is to recognize acute stress disorder as an early identifier of trauma survivors at risk of evolving chronic PTSD posttraumatic stress disorder. This study aims to prevent PTSD through an early delivery of cognitive behavior therapy. Precisely, this study indexes the relative effectiveness of extended exposure plus anxiety management in the treatment of ASD, acute stress disorder. The method involved 45 civilian trauma survivors who had acute stress disorder. They were given 5 sessions of prolonged exposure and a combination of continued exposure plus anxiety management or they were given supportive counseling within 2 weeks of the traumatic event. The results showed fewer patients with prolonged exposure and extended exposure and anxiety management than supportive counseling met the measures for PTSD after the treatment. These results suggest that PTSD may be effectively stopped with an early delivery of cognitive behavior therapy.

Lovallo, William R, and William R. Lovallo. Stress & Health. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2005. Print.

Stress plays a crucial role in one's health. This book is an accessible and brief examination of what is called psychological stress as well as its psychophysiological associations with cognition, brain functions, feelings, and the marginal mechanisms from which the body is controlled. This is the third edition of the book and it covers two significant and new areas of developing research. One is how a person's early life experiences modify key stress reactive systems at the level of "gene expression." The second is what big, normal, and little stress responses may signify for a person's general health and well-being. There are varying degrees of topics covered, some of which are triggered from stress like cortisol levels and what may cause stress such as trauma or injury. A chapter covers the body's endocrine response to stress. Hormone levels tend to become unbalanced during states of high stress and acute stress. Overall, this book is excellent for understanding the mechanisms behind stress.