Lab 4 is concerned with conducting a review of the literature and identifying an article that is related to the topic you are researching. We ask you to use material that was covered in the stress and coping lecture, carry out your own brief research inquiry, compose a discussion board post and engage in a conversation with one or more of your classmates.
For your main discussion post, find one website that speaks to the relationship between stress, coping and illness, and respond to each prompt below:
1) Provide the link to the website
2) Explain how the information that is presented on the website is related to what we discussed in class about stress and coping.
3) Use Google ScholarLinks to an external site. to search for peer-reviewed academic articles related to stress and coping during the COVID-19 pandemic. Google Scholar helps you find reputable scientific articles that were peer-reviewed before they were published. It is a better resource for conducting university research than is the regular Google Search engine. You should use multiple keywords in your search (e.g., coping, stress, COVID-19, etc.). Locate an article on the list that Google ScholarLinks to an external site. generates that interests you and read the abstract. Do not use the first article on the list (unless it is of special interest to you), otherwise, too many students will end up reporting on the exact same article. Provide a citation for the article in APA format (hint: you can find the citation in APA style by clicking the quotation marks under the article in Google Scholar), and write one to two sentences describing the article’s main topic.
4) Provide one example of how someone might use the coping strategies talked about in class (e.g., problem-focused coping) or through your research to help them handle stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic (for example, handling stress due to isolation, health, changes in routine, other general fears, etc.). Please feel free to provide your own unique example if you wish.
5) Explain how what you learned about stress, coping, and illness can be useful to you later in life.
After you make your main post, you are to read and comment on at least one of your classmates’ posts. All of your posts should be thoughtful, meaningful, respectful, and be at least 50 to 100 words in length.
Post that requires the comment on
…1. to an external site.
2. The article “Stress and Health: Psychological, Behavioral, and Biological Determinants” discusses in depth how stressors have an impact on our overall well-being. It touches on the psychological impacts of stress, which directly relates to topics discussed in this course. The psychological effects of stressors in early childhood are heavily discussed, and it points to stressors such as divorced parents, sexual abuse and violence as reasons for personality disorders later in life. It also speaks on coping mechanisms that people use when they have disorders related to prior trauma such as ASD and PTSD.
3. Polizzi, C., Lynn, S. J., & Perry, A. (2020). Stress and Coping in the Time of Covid-19: Pathways to Resilience and Recovery. Clinical neuropsychiatry, 17(2), 59–62. to an external site.
The article’s main topic is discussing coping strategies used by individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic and how that can help us take “goal-directed value-driven actions in midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
4. COVID-19 left us all very socially isolated. An example of how an individual may use problem-focused coping mechanisms to deal with this stress is by finding other creative ways to interact with others. One of the best ways that many people did this was by communicating in various ways online. I know this is something I did a lot, as I was always playing video games with friends to try and stay as social as possible during the isolation. People also used resources like social media, and would go live on instagram and other platforms in order to interact live with others. These were just some ways that people addressed the practical aspects of their situation in order to cope with the social isolation during the lockdown.
5. Learning about stress and coping mechanisms can be very useful for people. Some people may not know how to address stress they encounter, and learning about it can help people cope better when they do encounter stressful live events in the future. For example, learning about problem-focused coping can help me later because when I do encounter stress, I can try to take practical steps in making it better since I am now aware that that is a successful coping mechanism for many people. By learning these things, people can use these skills to improve their overall quality of life when they do encounter stress.
