The Positive Effects Of Stress: Portrait Of A Killer

To a great extent, stress can be a helpful response, especially for prehistoric humans. During this era, our species needed to react quickly to outside stimuli through a response of “fight or flight”. Through stress, certain hormones are released to help the individual resist the stressor, which may have meant running away from a natural predator. Thus, stress is a positive response that ensures the survival of the species. However, stress over a prolonged period of time causes exhaustion in the individual. Consequently, although stress can be helpful for individuals today, many often experience chronic stress, inflicting varying degrees of damage to their bodies. In the film Stress: Portrait of a Killer, many different researchers illuminate

Thoits highlights how inequality results in differences of health outcomes among different groups of people. For example, African Americans and Hispanics generally have higher morbidity than whites. However, Thoits also focuses on the relationship between mental health and stress. Adolescents – who tend to be more stressed than older folks – more often suffer the onset of psychiatric disorders, a factor that becomes curbed with increased age (543). Thus, this shows how stress causes adverse mental health. In addition, Thoits also ties social status to stress levels in a way that is similar to the findings detailed in Stress: Portrait of a Killer. Highlighting previous studies, Thoits notes how there are cumulative stressors that particularly affect females, young adults, and members of racial-ethnic minorities (544). These “cumulative stressors closely paralleled inequalities in rate of physical and/or mental health problems by social status” (544). Once again, this shows how people who are disenfranchised or simply fall lower on social hierarchies are also those who experience more stress and, consequently, worse health outcomes. Finally, Thoits also argues that “stress can proliferate across generations” (545). In other words, the negative effects on health due to stress may be intergenerational.

Together, these show that chronic stress is often a result of inequality and lower status. This stress, to a great extent, is adverse to one’s health and can cause anything from obesity to mental illness and even premature