Stress in Women

My term paper is on the topic of stress. Not just normal stress but I am focusing on stress with in women, young and old. For this term paper I am using three articles that are studies from professional psychologist on how stress with other conditions affects the women's health and emotion's of women. My last article is an interview form of six women with significant stress which induced health issues and they fought back, and developed their own arsenal of stress-busting habits. I will summaries the articles in the following paragraphs.

My first article is Stress, Rewards, and Change in the Centrality of Women's Family and Work Roles: Mastery as a Mediator. This study was conducted by Tina R. Norton, Anita Gupta, Mary Ann Parris Stephens, Lynn M. Martire, and Alone L. Townsend in March of 2005. The purpose of this study was to see and examine the role stress, rewards, mastery and centrality of women who occupy the four roles of caregiver to a disabled parent, a mother, a wife, and an employee. In this study, specifically, role mastery was tested as a mediator in the relationship between role experiences and change in role centrality. The participants were 195 women who simultaneously occupied the roles of primary care provider to a disabled parent, a mother to at least one child living at home, a wife, and an employee at work. The procedure involved in-person interviews using computer-assisted software, which took about 90 min. per interview. They took two interviews approximately one year apart, and the participants received $20 for each interview that they did. The results from the study suggest that increases in stress served to erode mastery and increases in rewarding role experiences served to enhance mastery. As there became more stress at work, the centrality of employment decreased through a diminished sense of mastery in the employee role. Both employee stress and rewards were considered simultaneously, and the effect of both role experiences can be seen above the other.

I thought that the study was written in an interesting way and was every clear on how the procedure was done. If someone was to ask me if they should use this article to write about stress, then I would tell them that it is a good study but it talks about stress in women and how mastery play a role in stress. So if the person was doing it on just stress then it might not be the best. I found it very interesting as to how doing so much in one day or even doing too much in a week or so can be so hard on your body. It scares me because as a woman, I think that I have been stressing a lot recently. Since the middle of my senior year of high school, when my father passed away, I have had to do more of the errands and with a full load of class, it becomes very stressful. With reading this I have learned that I should slow down and relax a little more, so I don't need help once I get older. I also have to make a last comment that woman have a lot that they have to deal with, like the 4 roles above, and it gets over whelming at time.

My second article is Substance Use, Related Problem Behaviors and Adult Attachment in a Sample of High Risk Older Adolescent Women, which was conducted by for females; Seana Golder, Mary Rogers Gillmore, Susan Spieker, and Diane Morrison; on June of 2005. In this study, adolescent mother are a heterogeneous group and studies investigating adolescent mothers vary widely in sample composition. The data came from a large ongoing study of the natural history of substance use among pregnant and parenting teenagers. At the start of the enrollment, all of the 241 respondents were the age of 17 or younger, not married, pregnant, and were planning to carry their babies for the full term. These girls were recruited in a three-county urban area of the Northwest. The researchers studied five types of measures. These measures were attachment, global psychological distress, self-esteem, problem behaviors, and covariates. The result of these studies's provided the initial support for the usefulness of attachment theory aiding the understanding of substance use and related problem behaviors among young mothers who had given birth as adolescents. It also says that the effect of attachment on behavior is at least partially mediated by psychological distress and low self-esteem. The study relies on respondents' self-reports of socially undesirable behaviors. There still had to be quite a few precautions to ensure the validity and reliability of these data including informing respondents as to why the information is needed, taking random urine toxicology screens, and concentrating questions on more recent events.

We all know that we should not drink in the first place. But you should especially not drink while you are caring a child within your womb or even if you have a child living in the house. Seeing that substance use can affect someone so much is amazing and that people still use it even after knowing the consequences. In my religion first off drinking or any substance use is not good. I now see why over all it is good to stay away from all the drugs. Substance use can affect so much with in the body, but after reading this study I have realized that it can cause psychological distress and other similar disorders, even some in the mind. I believe that people need to realize that they are not only hurting themselves but they could be and most like are hurting their loved ones and other people around them.

My third article is Mood Changes in Response to Psychosocial Stress in Healthy Young Women: Effects of Pretreatment with Cortisol. This study was conducted by Serkan Het and Oliver T. Wolf from the University of Bielefeld in 2007. This study has to do with stress but mostly as to how taking Cortisol effects stress. Cortisol is the primary and most important "glucocorticoids" in the human. Cortisol is synthesized in specific cells of the adrenal glands, released in the peripheral blood flow, and controlled in its production centrally by the complex feedback system of the "hypothalamic - pituitary - adrenal axis". The subjects were 44 healthy medication-free, females, which were nonsmoking volunteers with an average age of 22.7 years old and an average body mass index (BMI) of 21.1. All of the females were from the University of DÑŒsseldorf, DÑŒsseldorf, Germany. The researchers