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14.3: Life Stressors

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    308878
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    In the 1970s, two psychiatrists named Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe developed a scale that measured life stressors that could have impacted an individual or his or her family over the last three years. \({ }^3\) For families in the young family stage, getting married, having a baby, buying a home, or having a parent die ranked as the most stressful events. For middle and older families, having your spouse die, divorce or separating, moving, and getting married were among the most stressful events. In this paradigm one of these events can be coped with fairly well if the family members can gather enough resources to meet the challenge. Two or more acute stressors can pile up into your normative stressors and overwhelm you to the point of illness.

    How families respond to stressors makes a huge difference in their quality of life. Researchers have established that stress can strengthen you or destroy you, depending on how you cope with stressors as individuals or families. When a series of normal and less significant stressors accumulate, it can have the same effect as a major acute stressor. If both happen together, stress can pile up. Stressor pile up occurs when stressful events accumulate in such a manner that resolution has not happened with existing stressors before new stressors are added. Stressor pile up can be detrimental if adequate resources are not obtained to meet the demands of the stressors. \({ }^4\) This generation of families does not share the same conservative financial tendencies as did the generation of our grandparents. In the U.S. many desire to have what they desire now, even if debt has to be incurred to get it. Now-time gratification (also called present time) is the individual perspective that seeks immediate satisfaction of their needs, wants, and desires. Delayed gratification is the ability to invest time and effort now in hopes of a payoff down the road. Delayed gratification is very common among college students who are willing to put in 4-6 years of higher education for the promise of a life-long career of better earnings and life experiences.


    Footnotes

    3. retrieved 26 April, 2010 from http://www.apa.org/monitor/jan01/parenthood.aspx

    4. Holmes, T.H. and Rahe, R.H.: The social readjustments rating scales, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 11:213-218, 1967, also see another approach from Brown, G.W. and Harris, T.O.: Social origins of depression: A study of psychiatric disorder in women. London: Tavistock, 1978


    14.3: Life Stressors is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.