In abnormal psychology investigating patients’ atypical behavior, stress might serve as the trigger for mental illnesses. As any life challenges that affect people’s emotional well-being are perceived as stress, it has multiple ways of affecting disorders. These are based on the person’s predisposition to mental illnesses and personal characteristics. When dealing with stress for a long time, patients develop anxiety, aggression, and irritability, associated with more negative emotions and pessimistic views (Pascoe et al., 2020). Individuals suffering from chronic stress avoid public support, meaning they rarely consult psychologists and professionals who would help them alleviate the stress consequences. Gradually, these patients are trapped in depression since they receive no medical help and neglect their conditions.
It is generally accepted that stress develops severe mental health disorders, proven by DNA composition. Biologically speaking, stressors produce specific genes that affect the further development of depression in its carriers. People with depression have two short phenotypes of this gene, signaling that they were exposed to acute stress, while people with longer forms are mentally stable, coping with stressors quickly (Hooley et al., 2017). Therefore, the patients exposed to acute stress produce genes of abnormal length, having more chances of having post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
Most eating disorders are classified as mental health illnesses since they are directly connected to the person’s perception and reaction to psychological triggers such as stress. Wang et al. (2022) discuss pandemic-related stress and its effect on overeating, emphasizing the strong correlation between the two phenomena. Since people were in quarantine with anxiety and stress due to health issues and social distancing, it is evident that they experienced severe stress with unhealthy eating behavior. This disorder is linked to a lack of control, negative thoughts, and negative body image-related factors. When people cease experiencing pleasure from primitive actions due to stress, they find another pleasure source, such as food, neglecting their hunger level. Therefore, stress obviously alters people’s lives, forcing them to suffer from mental health disorders.
References
Hooley, J. M., Butcher, J. N., Nock, M. K., & Mineka, S. (2017). Chapter 5: Stress and physical and mental health. In Abnormal psychology (17th ed., pp. 160–196). Pearson. Web.
Pascoe, M. C., Hetrick, S. E., & Parker, A. G. (2020). The impact of stress on students in secondary school and higher education. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25(1), 104–112. Web.
Wang, R., Ye, B., Wang, P., Tang, C., & Yang, Q. (2022). Coronavirus stress and overeating: The role of anxiety and COVID-19 burnout. Journal of Eating Disorders, 10(1), 1–8. Web.