Causes of Stress in Today's Society

Stress appears to be the natural outcome of the demands that life places on individuals and families, just like what H. Selye mentioned, “If you are alive, there is stress in your life.” Stress is often described as a feeling of being overwhelmed, worried or run-down. Stress can affect people of all ages, genders and circumstances and can lead to both physical and psychological health issues. According to Baum (1990), “Stress is any uncomfortable emotional experience accompanied by predictable biochemical, physiological and behavioural changes.” Based on a 2010 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association (APA), “More adults report that their stress is increasing than decreasing. 39 percent said their stress had increased over the past year and even more said that their stress had increased over the past five years (44 percent).” So what makes people so stressed out? Majority of the people experience stress due to family issues and work.

  

Stress caused by family is due to several factors. Based on Y.H Chan in Singapore Medical Journal (2005), ‘family’ scored a mean of 57.38 in being a contributor to stress in Singaporeans and according to a 2010 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association (APA), 57% of the respondents responded that ‘family responsibilities’ as being the source of their stress. In which women are more likely to experience stress than men (28 percent vs. 20 percent) and married women are reported to have higher level of stress than single women. This is because such women experience something others do not – prenatal maternal stress. It is very taxing on women, especially in today’s society where most have to juggle between their job and welfare of their families. Expectant mothers have to experience morning sickness during the first few stages of pregnancy, and some even throughout the period of their pregnancy and not to forget the psychological and physical toll on their bodies for having to be extra careful and pay extra attention to minute details to everything they do in order to ensure a healthy and safe delivery with no complications. Having to fret over all these things eventually causes anxiety and in turn – stress. According to First 5 LA (2004), anxiety is the strongest stress-related risk factor for preterm birth, in which the types of anxiety include fears and anxiety about the outcome of the pregnancy, the experience of labour, the ability to care for a new baby, and the health and well-being of the baby. A survey conducted by ndhealth.gov (2008) revealed that 72% of mothers experienced at least one stressful event in the 12 months before their baby’s birth and women who had experienced at least one major stressful event during the course of pregnancy had a higher prevalence of several pregnancy complications such as preterm labour as compared to women without a stressful event. Hence, anxiety causes expectant mothers to feel stress and in turn also cause complications during the course of pregnancy.

The birth of a child though can be a joyous and eagerly awaited event; however, it can also create many new changes within the family. Fatigue, increased responsibilities and new schedules that often accompany parenthood can add to the stress already experienced by the mother and family. To make matter worse, stressors like having a child born with special needs can increase stress levels of family by folds. Oxfordjorunals.org revealed a regression analysis of the factors causing most stress in carers of children who needs special attention were; in order of importance: behaviour problems in the child, night-time disturbance, stigmatization by the society, adversity in the family, multiplicity of impairments, difficulty in settling the child at night, problems with the child's health, problems with the child's appearance, and money worries. Most of these mothers have limited family opportunities as their child require special attention and most often than not, are unable to play normally as normal kids do. There is also the stress of lifetime care for the child such that the prospect of permanent dependency is overwhelming. Another cause of stress would be having to worry not being able to outlive the child and who to take over the role of caring for their kid should they one day become unable to take care of him be it financially, psychologically or physically as the community has little provision for their kid’s wellbeing when parents can no longer care for their child. A study by R. Bouma and R. Schweitzer (1990) found that mothers of autistic children have to cope with additional stress like social isolation and stigma that are associated with psychological disorders such as the negative responses towards the behaviour of their autistic child can be highly stressful to them. M. Bristol mentioned in The Effects of Autism on the Family that such negative responses “may become particularly acute as the child gets older and the community has less tolerance for deviant behaviour in someone who appears to be a normal adult.” Moreover, parents may self-inflict stress on themselves by blaming themselves for their child’s condition, and this feeling is especially strong for those who were instigated by close relatives and in-laws’ as well as the feeling of being less competent than other parents. All these factors heighten stress levels of members of family.

Children-related stress aside, another stressor in family context would be money. According to the American Psychological Association (2010), ¾ of participants responded that ‘money’ being their source of stress. In the context of Singapore, based on Y.H Chan in Singapore Medical Journal (2005), ‘finance’ scored a mean of 66.97 in being a contributor to stress in Singaporeans. So why are so many people stressing over money issues? According to Mercer Worldwide City Quality of Living Survey (2012), Singapore ranked 6^th worldwide in cost of living, 2 positions higher than Hong Kong and based on the Consumer Price Index of Singapore in 2010, basic necessities such as housing, food and transport account for 63% of total spending and only 16% for recreation. So just imagine the daily stresses of having to brood over the cost of basic necessities and the monthly struggles to pay bills as well as the additional stress of other expenses for raising children in Singapore. This financial stress is even more evident with recession on the rise. In a Pew Research poll (2009), 13% of parents with adult children said the recession had forced a child to return home after living independently. Hence, this adds financial stress to older parents of having to provide for their kids again when they themselves have already retired and living off their pension funds.

Other than family that contributes to stress, another major contributor to stress is work.  As defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) (2003), “Work-related stress is the response people may have when presented with work demands and pressures that are not matched to their knowledge and abilities and which challenge their ability to cope.” According to the survey by the American Psychological Association (2010), 70% of respondents mentioned work as being the main cause of stress. To closer related to our society, it is further substantiated by asiaone.com (2009), where “69% of local (Singaporean) employees foreseeing an increase in stress for the rest of the year, second globally only to Japan.” In a video named Stress – Portrait of a Killer by National Geographic (2008), neurobiologist, R. Sapolsky of Stanford University studied the way of life of baboons to related stress in humans. It is found that stress is caused due to lack of control. It is found that subordinate baboons experience higher level of stress than the alpha male and similarly this can be applied in human working society; the lower the rank an employee is in the job hierarchy, the higher the level of stress. This is because, employees usually don’t have a say in making company decisions and can only comply with their higher-ups and following orders. It can be particularly stressful to employees if they encounter rigid and difficult leaders who demand and pressurise employees with jobs that are not matched with employees’ knowledge and abilities and exercise little room for discussion. With little control over their work and the constant pent up of “unjust” they have to endure with nowhere to release, thus resulting to the increase in stress level of workers. Moreover, if they have different perspective towards a particular task, it makes working together with their leaders more difficult thus adding the level of stress.

The higher managements experience stress that normal employees would not experience. Though workers of lower status in the corporate ladder experience work stress due to pressure from the higher-ups, but the higher-ups also have their own work stress that only they would experience and most of these stresses are often related to dire consequences that may affect the whole corporation or company. In a project carried out by Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL) called Ideas2Action (I2A), it is found that leaders experience stress equally between their bosses, peers, direct reports and customers. While employees stress over lack of control in their work, leaders stress over having too much to control. Project I2A also reported that task demands such as job responsibilities and decision making are the source of stress for leaders. Executives and top managements often have to make decisions that may affect the success or failure of the entire company thus also responsible in the job security of those under them. They carry huge responsibilities of how the company is to be run as well as managing workers in terms of work performances and interpersonal relationships and communications. They also have to be accountable for whatever decisions they make, should the decision be a wrong one, it could cause huge losses to the company, thus stress level increases. In worst-case scenario, this would reflect badly on their reputation in the business world and may be hard to climb back up to their original high standing in the corporate ladder. All these add on the amount of stress experienced by top executives. Moreover, many are also constantly concerned with poor management styles or with the possibility of competition with people of lower standing in job hierarchy overruling them if they are incapable in leading or maintaining in completing quality tasks and this is evidenced by the survey carried out by CCL that such competition ranked the highest (35%) as a contributor to stress by peers.

Stress is like a part and parcel of life and there are many causes of stress such as family stress that includes prenatal maternal stress, stress of caring for child with special needs and financial stress, and organizational stress such as work stress of employees and from leaders. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), prolong exposure to stress can be dangerous to our health, in which over time, continued strain on your body from routine stress may lead to serious health problems, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, anxiety disorder, and other illnesses. Therefore, it is important for us to know exactly what is stressing us out and from the main problem, work things out in order to manage and mitigate its negative effects. Some solutions in coping with stress would be to find people who can provide emotional and other support, especially close family and friends to related to them regarding stress in workplace or turn to the community or religious organizations for help regarding family issues. It is important to take own responsibility in recognizing signs of body responses to stress and avoid pessimism and dwelling over matters. With the correct positive mindset, it is possible to maintain a low stress level.  As mentioned by American Philosopher and Psychologist, W. James “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another,” it is up to ourselves in the ways we deal with stress and manage stress level.

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