‘Many Nigerians use wrong coping strategy to manage stress’
RICHARD ADEBAYO is a consultant Psychiatrist/clinical Psychologist at Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital Yaba, Lagos. In this interview with ANTHONIA OBOKOH, he explains what stress is, the implications for physical and mental health, wrong coping strategies and offers solutions to manage it. Excerpts:
What are the implications of stress on the society?
The implication of stress to the society is enormous, for instance, in a busy city like Lagos state after a bad traffic, people walk into the office and complain about their experiences, which leads to conversations about bad traffic and bad drivers. The mental consequences of stress can lead to anger, frustration and when individuals can no longer tolerate, they become impatient and it leads to road rage. Not only that, it can also lead to avoidable road accidents that will not only affect the person but other vehicles and lives that would be involved. Another implication of stress to the society is the effect at the place of work. The productivity of someone who is undergoing stress as a matter of fact nosedives with time, the productivity will go down and if it is a student, failure upon failure occurs. On this part, the effect on the society will affect the nation and over all national productivity. Family is a society, stress can also affect relationships, it can disrupt family life, it can cause harmony in the homes and it can affect internal personal relationships negatively.
What is stress and how is it caused?
Stress is an everyday event that human beings pass through. Stress can be physical and emotional. Reactions due to excessive pressure can cause stress, or it can arise when we cannot cope with pressure. Stress has both positive and negative aspect; we need some measures of stress in life for every human achievement either as a push or motivation to accomplish our objectives, aims, plans and goals. Without some pressure of stress, you might not likely be able to live up to fulfilment and you need some level of stress to do this, we called that positive phase of stress. But when the pressure is becoming too much, and your coping mechanism or strategies seems not adequate enough to take care of this increasing pressures, then you find yourself in the negative phase of stress. Negative events are clear to cause a whole lot of stress. Often time, when we use the word stress, we are referring to the negative phase of stress, but I want to point out that we need some level of stress to push us as human.
What are the signs, symptoms of stress?
What determines stress is on individuals’ tendency or personality traits and your constitutions physically and psychologically may also go a long way to determine your ability to do a lot of things. Sometime, what goes on in the body can be stressful to people, medical issues, physical issue, work schedules, mental activities some may be considered stressful. Signs and symptoms of stress can vary, an individual can complain of lack of energy most of the time, get easily tired, fatigue, malaise, headache, sleep disorder, inability to concentrate, failures, committing unavoidable mistakes, memory deficit, tendency to be forgetful may also be early warning signs of stress or irritability, getting easily angry and all that.
What are the health implications of stress?
There are so many health implications of stress; we defined stress earlier as physical and emotional reactions to excessive pressures which have effect on both physical and mental health. Looking at the physical aspect, an individual who is undergoing stress, the body metabolism could be affected, the hormones in the body could be disrupted, and the alert system in the body, the adrenaline and non-adrenaline will also be on the hyper level because the person is always agitated most of the time. For instance, if you do not eat on time because you are undergoing stress, or you do not have the time for food, it can affect the nutritional state and also the immune system, when then ability for the immune system to fight against common infections will be lowered and affected. That is one of the reasons you see people who are undergoing severe stress, tend to have common symptoms like catarrh, cough, sneezing, allergies issues ,the body is not able to fight common infection and are easily down with malaria, gastrointestinal problems , ulcers. However, a woman undergoing stress may see her menstrual cycle earlier than usual or may not see it at all. So there is a disruption in hormonal balance because of stress and they may not even get pregnant on time because the hormones regulating all this process in the body will go a wire or disrupted. They are no longer in equilibrium where they are supposed to be. Likewise, a man that is undergoing severe stress, the sperm production may be lowered, because these are hormones, hormones related functions in the body which can lead to infertility and as I have mentioned, stress can disrupt all the system in the body. So, stress on the mental aspect, an individual undergoing stress, emotionally will be affected and they tends to be in the state of anxiety, they are usually anxious. Anxiety disorder can come up in so many ways, depression may eventually set in because they are not able to achieve their goals and are not happy with their life and fill frustrated.
If an individual has a genetic tendency of coming down with mental disorders, the person may be quickly pushed into the disorder such as schizophrenia, a real major disorder. We know here that a patient can easily relapse into mental illness when they are undergoing severe stress. Stress can make some people to become addicted to psychoactive substances such as alcohols, cannabis, and cocaine as a result of wrong coping strategies, I mentioned that earlier. Some people use wrong coping strategy and invariably, they get addicted to those substances. This could lead to mental and behavioural disorders as a result of all the consumption of different substances and is a major psychiatric problem because of their wrong coping strategies born out of stress so to say.
Would you have any advice for Nigerians on lifestyle moderation to reduce stress?
Understanding yourself is very important to know your limit, boundaries and when you reach the breaking point of stress and take thing easy. You must be able to know when to delegate duties and when to say no to give yourself time to do little things like relaxation. Lifestyle moderation is important, what you eat, drink and what to avoid, you do not have to wait till diseases like diabetes, hypertension before getting adjusted. Avoid junks and key into natural fruits and food items with high fibres, vegetables, dieting, mediation, regular exercise, nutrition and especially finding time to rest.
Physical relaxation is very important, spending time to relax on weekends not working seven days a week, twenty four- seven. It is not proper if you want to enjoy your life, you must also be able to do something about your lifestyle. An individual who is sleeping poorly now, also has chances of losing appetite because, those who are stressed up, find it difficult in eating and some people use wrong coping strategy, when they are stressed up, they think the next is to smoke cigarettes or take alcohol.