Understanding Stress Coping Strategies in Psychology

The article by Orzechowska et al. (2013) investigates how individuals cope with stress, which is a significant factor leading to depression and other health issues. The study involved surveying 80 patients aged between 22 and 60, aiming to understand how dealing with stress influences depression levels. Stress can lead to negative attitudes, reduced understanding, harsh behaviors, and even mental disorders if not managed properly. According to the cognitive transactional model, overcoming stress involves modifying one's behavior in response to life's demands, often requiring a positive environment to be effective. The research identified 15 strategies that could aid in reducing stress, including active coping, seeking social support, and positive reinterpretation. However, some methods like reliance on anti-depressant pills can be counterproductive by lowering nerve capacity over time. Men and women exhibit different stress-coping behaviors, with men potentially increasing smoking or drinking as a response. Effective stress management is crucial for maintaining mental and physical health, allowing individuals to lead stress-free lives despite everyday challenges.

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology
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Orzechowska (2013) described that coping with stress is the activity that an individual
undergoes in a stressful condition. Stress leads to depression and the ultimatum of stress is many
diseases. This is why the resolving of the stress issues has become the primary concern of
psychology. The article discusses few coping strategies, which are useful for stress reduction and
which helps individual to cope with stress and remain depression free and healthy.
The methods the study was to identify the results of coping with the stress factors. The
methods used in the article was a survey among 80 patients of age starting from 22 to 60 and the
methods was to identify the depression that the individuals have and how dealing with stress
made them depressed. Stress is such a factor that often leads to the negative attitude in a
person’s life. A person can only overcome stress when they are able to control the reasons or
reduce the over thinking for any single matter.
According to Talarowska (2013), Stress is very harmful for human life. Stress brings in
depression, which then results to heart problems and many other problems. Stress among an
individual reduces the capacity of understanding and makes the person behave very harshly.
Often much stress leads to mental disorder and results in nervous breakdown. High amount of
stress leads to post traumatic stress disorder and many types of other disorders in a person’s life.
The identifying of stress in one’s life reduces the cause of stress and eliminates the chances of
diseases in an individual. Coping with stress are all the process, which helps an individual to
release their stress by providing them the ability to control their depression. The processes those
are helpful for stress reduction is constantly changing according to the individual’s state of mind.
According to the cognitive transactional model, overcoming stress is the effort shown
through an individual’s behaviour and this helps in dealing with the demand of life. For coping

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with stress, one needs to identify the factors that are hampering the mental state and change those
specific behaviours with other positive attitudes. Environment plays an important role in this
issue because one needs a positive environment around them to cope up with stress because
negative vibe around a stressed person will lead the individual to depression (Orzechowska et al.,
2013).
The emotional state of mind that an individual has during excessive stress affects the nervous
system of the body and results to changes in the mental condition of the person and as its
consequence, the oversensitivity in an individual creates a problem and the individual fails to
recover or overcome the stress factors. It is identified by Orzechowskaet al., (2013), in the study
that the individuals that have depression problems utilize the strategies that does not help them
reduce their stress and makes them unhealthy. They intake anti-depressing pills or tablets and
have the thought that it will help them overcome the stress but this is not at all right. The process
of consuming anti-depressing pills lowers the capacity of the nerves by giving comfort to the
individual for a certain time. Often this kind of pills become a drug for the depressed person and
they intake the pills very frequently and gradually lose their mental state with time. Men and
women adapt various ways to cop up with stress, if a woman is consuming anti-depressing pills,
the man increase the rate of drinking and smoking and thus invites other health problems in their
life and stress remains intact giving a short time relief (Orzechowska et al., 2013). In the study, it
is identified that there are 15 strategies that can be useful to reduce the stress factor in an
individual’s life.
Those are active coping
Planning

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Seeking social support for instrumental reasons
Seeking social support for emotional reasons
Suppression of competing activities
Turning to religion
Positive reinterpretation and growth
Restraint coping
Acceptance Focus on and venting of emotions
Denial ignoring or refusal to acknowledge the problems
Mental disengagement by avoiding of consequences by turning to other activities
Behavioral disengagement
Alcohol-drug disengagement
Sense of humor
Effective stress management will help the person to hold back stress and lead them towards a
life, which does not have any stress or depression. A normal life offers an individual with the
stress management feature and relaxation that will not hamper the physical and mental condition
of a person. For stress, managing an individual must know how to, not let stress hamper their
mind state. An individual faces stress for many issues and this can be due to the work pressure,
daily life issues or any other kind of serious issues. In spite of the fact that a person’s life is

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always filled with problems and stresses it depends on the individual to act smartly, overcome
the stress, and live an effective life (Orzechowska et al., 2013).

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References:
Orzechowska, A., Zajączkowska, M., Talarowska, M., & Gałecki, P. (2013). Depression and
ways of coping with stress: A preliminary study. Medical science monitor: international
medical journal of experimental and clinical research, 19, 1050.