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14 votes

Is post-traumatic stress disorder preventable?

Beta blockers (β1-Blockers) lower norepinephrine release (Berg, 2014), however it seems that the jury is still out on whether there is an effective and ethical way to prevent Post-Traumatic Stress ...
Chris Rogers's user avatar
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5 votes
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How to measure stress quantitatively?

When your goals is to measure one option over the other As part of a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) study I also needed to measure cognitive load in order to assess whether a particular user ...
Steven Jeuris's user avatar
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4 votes
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Provable ROI for call center rest periods?

This is the paper you would want to read on this topic. The paper empirically compares four modes of managing interruptions. It is a great (and long) read so I'll try to summarize the bit for you: ...
Robin Kramer-ten Have's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

How do some humans seemingly naturally have positive or mitigated appraisal of stressful events?

The interactions among several factors probably account for variability in reactivity to stressful events, including genetics, epigenetics, early life experience, and culture (e.g., Alexander et al., ...
mrt's user avatar
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4 votes
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What is happening neurochemically when we seek to reduce stress by taking aggressive action?

So there's a lot of things to talk about here. First off, there are many strategies one can use to regulate stress. James Gross, for example, has put forward an incredibly influential process model ...
mrt's user avatar
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4 votes

What is the medical term for semi-mindless activities to help reduce anxiety? ... such as gardening, mowing, cleaning... perhaps driving

I have not been able to find any term, medical or non-medical, which includes the word asynchronous, but to add to the answer by @user20460 there is the non-medical term hobbies. Taking part in ...
Chris Rogers's user avatar
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4 votes
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Standardised test to measure workplace stress

Although it is not exactly stress, there are many self-rating scales for workload. The most popular one is the NASA-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX; Hart & Staveland, 1988; see also here). The NASA-TLX ...
Robin Kramer-ten Have's user avatar
4 votes

Is there a mental health disorder related to a harmful lack of anxiety and stress?

Sociopaths (people with Antisocial Personality Disorder) report lower levels of anxiety and stress than the general population. Psychopathic traits tend to foster resiliency and are protective against ...
Kevin Michael's user avatar
4 votes

Is 'your mom will be sad' actually a good argument to pose to someone thinking of committing suicide?

As with many mental health concerns, the situation for each individual is unique and therefore what we do and how we deal with the concern is also unique. Nothing said in this answer is a hard and ...
Zoe Howlett's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

Can stress situations force people to smile?

In research (Ansfield, 2007) Smiling when distressed was most prevalent in conditions in which participants reported the greatest emotional distress. Specifically, while viewing distressing videos, ...
Chris Rogers's user avatar
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3 votes

Emotional Calculator; How can I mathematically show a decrease in anxiety using an emotional equation?

Attempting to reduce emotional responses to mathematics is likely in the realm of chaos theory. Here is a great Robert Sapolsky Stanford lecture on Chaos versus Reductionism. https://youtu.be/...
Keith Knauber's user avatar
3 votes

Is there any research about effect of unfamiliar environment on stress?

I have found the following Older people's cardiac responses as indicators of stress in familiar and unfamiliar environments (Lewis & Phillips, 2012) I also found: Padilla, A. M., Alvarez, M., &...
Chris Rogers's user avatar
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3 votes

How to counteract the deterioration of speech in stutterers by targeting sympathetic arousal?

The first line treatment for stuttering (I'm a stutterer myself) is speech therapy. Such therapies generally focus on helping stutterers to learn ways to minimize stuttering when they speak, such as ...
AliceD's user avatar
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3 votes
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Can calmness happen during the fight-flight response?

With looking at the possibility of calmness during stress and trauma, you only have to look at the situation with rape victims and soldiers witnessing severe traumatic events who dissociate (Ellert, ...
Chris Rogers's user avatar
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3 votes
Accepted

What is the medical term for semi-mindless activities to help reduce anxiety? ... such as gardening, mowing, cleaning... perhaps driving

I have read it mentioned as grounding- techniques or activities. Activities that pull you into the present, and, if possible, fulfill you by giving you the impression towards achieving a goal.
user20460's user avatar
3 votes

How does listening to music decrease stress?

This may be happening due to beat entrainment. Different music genres have different beat and rhythm patterns. The ones that are calming will generally have a lower beat and rhythm frequencies. The ...
Justas's user avatar
  • 1,537
3 votes

How to measure your stress levels?

The term eustress was coined by endocrinologist Hans Selye, consisting of the Greek prefix eu- meaning "good", and stress, literally meaning "good stress". There is also the Yerkes–Dodson law which ...
Chris Rogers's user avatar
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3 votes

How are IQ test scores affected by psychological stress or trauma?

Short answer: The effect of stress and trauma on IQ varies significantly according to type and severity, but is overall fairly low relative to normal variation in scores. IQ test development is ...
Arnon Weinberg's user avatar
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3 votes
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What is the difference between chronic stress and anxiety?

Chronic stress, as defined in the field of psychology, refers to a state of ongoing physiological arousal that occurs in response to prolonged exposure to stressful situations or stressors. These ...
Ali Bahrami's user avatar
2 votes

Can a positive change result in positive stress?

It sounds like you're looking for the word "eustress" or "good stress". Which isn't exactly a label of stress, which as commented is negative, but a positive perception of stress. My favorite go to ...
Reed Rawlings's user avatar
2 votes

Getting useful readings out of GSR sensors while moving?

I think the general downside of the galvanic skin response (GSR) apply here. Wikipedia sums up a few confounding factors that affect the validity of GSR: Temperature and humidity (affect the ...
AliceD's user avatar
  • 20.5k
2 votes

How does emotional stress cause skeletal muscle rigidity?

Short answer The stress response included norepinephrine release, in turn increasing blood pressure. This may cause muscle tension. Background What an interesting question. To my surprise, I couldn'...
AliceD's user avatar
  • 20.5k
2 votes

Is there any research about effect of unfamiliar environment on stress?

You may be interested in related research on how unfamiliar environments negatively affect sleep quality. Tamaki, M., Bang, J. W., Watanabe, T., & Sasaki, Y. (2016). Night watch in one brain ...
KTK's user avatar
  • 86
2 votes

What causes muscle stiffness contraction and tension during stress

Presumably you to mean to ask what pathway mediates muscle tension. muscle tension is controlled by the reticular formation (in the brain stem), so it doesn't require anything special to happen in the ...
Fizz's user avatar
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2 votes
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Why does journaling seem to reduce stress?

Short answer: Like much of psychotherapy in general, we mostly know that it works, but not so much about why it works. Journaling or journal therapy is a type of writing therapy, itself a form of ...
Arnon Weinberg's user avatar
  • 19.4k
2 votes

Why does journaling seem to reduce stress?

Spoken language is the primary medium of counselling and psychotherapy. The therapeutic value of written language has also been studied extensively, both to provide self-help information and to elicit ...
Chris Rogers's user avatar
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2 votes

What is the medical term for semi-mindless activities to help reduce anxiety? ... such as gardening, mowing, cleaning... perhaps driving

What you are describing sounds a lot like aspects of Occupational Therapy (sometimes called Ergotherapy). Occupational therapy can include prescribed activity such as knitting (to meaningfully occupy ...
user2705196's user avatar
2 votes

Emotional Calculator; How can I mathematically show a decrease in anxiety using an emotional equation?

Chip Conley's ideas as to emotional equations represent an interesting concept; however, the equations do not appear to be founded in science at this stage. To represent the equations mathematically ...
Tony Mobbs's user avatar
  • 1,738
2 votes

Is exercise considered a 'fight-flight' situation by our brain?

Interestingly, intense exercise elevates levels of cortisol, which is the primary stress hormone. However, since this intense exercise usually only lasts for a short time (except maybe for ultra-...
jerlich's user avatar
  • 199

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