Psychosocial stressors in children…

from the Swedish child-film Dunderklumpen (1974, English site here and Swedish here), I have played the first tune with a couple of pupils.

Peter Währborg (see former posting "Empathy and Stress...") also writes about children and psychosocial stressors at page 79-81 in his book (mentioned in the former posting).

He writes that in the main the same things which are stressing children are stressing adults.

The most important stressors are emotionally significant separations, for instance parents divorce, but also getting new teachers and classmates. When children loose a part of the body because of illness or accident they react with a powerful stress reaction, as when a person whom is important dies or moves. Children lives in a world which is a little bigger than adults understand Wärhborg writes.

Discomfort (vantrisel) being in a school and a class which only causes social and psychic suffering is of course not fun and causes (sometimes severe) stress in children. If you experience (thinks) you don’t manage especially well in school each failure gives new proofs on your insufficiency or inadequacy. The self esteem is jeopardized, and the inability to live up to the demands parents, teachers or others put turns into chronic stress.

Difficult relations are another source of stress in children. It looks as children in this case reacts more equal to grown up women, i.e., they react more pronounced on difficult relations than men do.

Children have many different sorts of relations which can play a significant or important role for the risk developing stress (my addition: and for minimizing the bad effects?).

Especially powerful are the stress reactions in children exposed to insulting “specific treatment” (särbehandling) or victimization (?) such as mobbing. (See this pdf-file on "Victimization at Work" from the Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health).

Währborg thinks that children’s sensitivity means that the best would be if the classes were small and stable.

Encroachments (abuse), accidents, maltreatment or other severe traumas also causes stress. Sometimes this stress state is of a more serious nature, so called Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Not least children who have immigrated can carry things with them that they haven’t got any opportunity to process.

Währborg also mentions time and decision conflicts as a source for stress reactions in children something we also see in adults. When children feel powerlessness or that they don’t have control over their situation they react with stress.

Children suffer more seriously because of lack of security and social stability. The family-situation plays an important role in this (in moderating, and in moderating both this and that?). Here it isn’t only a question of interaction-patterns in the family but also about events happening to the family.

My brief reflections: We have tended to minimize and belittle things children experience, and to sweep it under the rug? And it was even more so earlier? If you didn’t talk about bigger and smaller events or traumas they didn’t harm one thought. And the child and whole events became surrounded by silence.

See about the ACE-study here and here.

Empathy and stress...

Updated in the evening: The Swedish stress-researcher Peter Währborg (see photo above) writes in his book ”Stress och den nya ohälsan” (“Stress and the new ill health”) at page 63 in the (under-)chapter “Övriga psykologiska stressorer” (“Other psychological Stressors”) to the chapter "Stressorer" (Stressors"?), that there is an abundance (uppsjö) of psychological conditions which can redeem (utlösa) stress.

He writes that empathy, defined as the ability to compassion, has shown to be associated with an increased degree of stress-physiological activity in their research. Maybe this is surprising to some he writes, but at the same time this isn’t entirely unreasonable.

An engagement in others and for others can in a moral sense be seen as positive, but for the individual form/create strain (skapa påfrestning) and stress.

He also writes that we can discern (skönja) two principal, main causes to psychic stress. At the one hand the ones that depends on the primary emotional reaction which occurs with, for instance, a separation and on the other these which primarily depends on our personal philosophy (föreställningsvärld). The former we can group as emotional and the latter as cognitive stressors he writes.

And on page 62 he writes about Harlow’s research on monkeys, I see now, in the (under)chapter with the title “Separationer och förluster” (“Separations and losses”).

He thinks that separations and losses (especially of relations which play a central role for well being) seem to be a particularly significant psychological factor behind the development of stress, something that has been shown in many experiments, but also in studies which his group has done on children exposed to involuntary separations.

But how does one come to terms with this (eventual vulnerability to stress and burn out)? By changing ones thoughts or using other popular methods today?

I think one should need something else… Maybe I come back to this later.

A comment to my earlier posting on Balancing made me think...

Addition in the evening: I read further in the book by Währborg. At page 78-79 he writes about the differences between men and women. It’s during the last (one or two?) decades one has noticed the differences between the genders in scientific studies.

A lot talks for (??) that the women’s health has deteriorated generally, at least in how the health is experienced subjectively. Stress-related troubles have increased, especially in young women.

According to Währborg Christina Maslach (earlier postings on Maslach and Leiter and on Währborg) has established that burn out looks different in men and women, even if the condition is about equally distributed (?) between the sexes.

In women the emotional exhaustion (feelings of emptiness) are more intense and usual. Men react with depersonalization and frigidity more often instead.

More recent research has shown that women more often than men develop relation-related stress.

There is also much that talks for that women feel (subjectively?) more stressed than men. In Währborg’s research they have found that women experience time-pressure more often than men, and think they are easier stressed and they are more often sad or depressed. They experience powerlessness more often than men and perform their duties “to whatever price.”

Interestingly enough women describe themselves as more empathic than men does (!!), when this at the same time vary in correlation (samvarierar) positively with occurrence in stress substances as noradrenalin and adrenalin in the blood.

The last-mentioned finding is especially interesting as empathy is apprehended as a positive feeling. Women in works which put big and lengthy demands on empathy (for instance people in health-care, teachers etc.) are at greater risk that this capacity for empathy becomes a stressor. This is in fact maybe not so strange, as compassion with another person implies both a strong feeling but also powerlessness.

Währborg thinks that a conclusion one can draw is that women to a higher degree than men experience stress in their relations. Besides empathy (a natural feeling in many relations on good and bad) seem to generate stress.

Währborg also writes that the sleeping-time has decreased considerably (page 83). Before Thomas Edison invented the incandescent lamp (glödlampan) we slept nine to ten hours in average per night. Now we sleep just below seven hours per night. And the sleeping quality has successively been worse.

Through measuring the brainwaves (EEG) and melatonin one has found that it is worries for the coming day which above all causes worse sleeping quality with shorter periods of deep recovery-sleep (??).

Sleeping troubles are more common in women than men.

But there are probably exceptions...

I wonder where the roots for all this lies... Maybe more about this later... And maybe also write about what Währborg writes about children and stress.