A systems approach to stress, stressors and resilience in humans

Abstract

The paper focuses on the biology of stress and resilience and their biomarkers in humans from the system science perspective. A stressor pushes the physiological system away from its baseline state towards a lower utility state. The physiological system may return towards the original state in one attractor basin but may be shifted to a state in another, lower utility attractor basin. While some physiological changes induced by stressors may benefit health, there is often a chronic wear and tear cost due to implementing changes to enable the return of the system to its baseline state and maintain itself in the high utility baseline attractor basin following repeated perturbations. This cost, also called allostatic load, is the utility reduction associated with both a change in state and with alterations in the attractor basin that affect system responses following future perturbations. This added cost can increase the time course of the return to baseline or the likelihood of moving into a different attractor basin following a perturbation. Opposite to this is the system’s resilience which influences its ability to return to the high utility attractor basin following a perturbation by increasing the likelihood and/or speed of returning to the baseline state following a stressor. This review paper is a qualitative systematic review; it covers areas most relevant for moving the stress and resilience field forward from a more quantitative and neuroscientific perspective.

Personal Resilience for Diagnostic Radiographer Healthcare Education: Lost in Translation?

“…This seems important because links have been made between distress and empathy decline in student healthcare practitioners, with the ability to demonstrate empathy being linked to patient-centred care (Neumann et al 2011). Other authors also appear to be making links between resilience, stress, and workplace wellbeing (McDonaldet al 2012, Oken, Chamine, and Wakeland 2015, Scholes 2008, Smith 2015, Sood et al 2014.…”

Influence of dog presence on the tolerance and evaluation of aversive stimulation

“…Many studies have been conducted to understand people's emotional responses to certain kinds of aversive sounds (Zald and Pardo 2001;Cox 2007;Cox 2008;Neumann, Waters and Westbury, 2008;Tajadura-Jiménez et al 2010). Aversive auditory stimulation is known to stimulate the amygdala (Zald and Pardo 2001), a brain structure essentially related to emotional evaluation including the modulation of stress responses (Oken et al 2014). However, studies on human-dog relationships investigating aversive sounds as a stressful experience are missing.…”

Stressed-out dads can (metabolically) stress their kids

“…Psychological stress is common in our modern society (Oken et al, 2015). Epidemiologic and/or experimental animal studies demonstrate that prolonged stress increases risk for many health problems, including neuropsychiatric disorders (Lupien et al, 2009), tumorigenesis (Thaker et al, 2006), and type 2 diabetes (Chandola et al, 2006).…”