Stress and its Effects

Stress and Illness
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Stress and Illness
Introduction
Psychological trauma refers to the mental reactions to disturbing or distressing events. These reactions may range from feelings of helplessness, shock, and being overwhelmed. Traumatizing events include natural disasters, accidents, violence, severe illness, and rape. This condition may be a one-time experience, ongoing, or long-term. It may also be chronic, acute, or complex based on scope. The effects likewise range in severity from short-term to long-term. This paper will analyze trauma, its impacts on an individual and their offspring based on genetics.
Effects of Trauma
The immediate reactions to trauma may include confusion, exhaustion, sadness, dissociation, numbness, and anxiety. These are normal on an initial traumatic experience and are prevalent on almost all survivors of the stressful events. However, some people have more severe responses, including persistent intrusive recollections even on return to safety, severe dissociation, and continuous distress without a moment of calmness or rest. Delayed reactions to trauma may involve sleep disorders, acute fatigue, nightmares, depression, flashback anxiety, and fear of recurrence. A victim may also avoid any activity or sensation linked to the trauma. In the long term, a victim may develop suicidal feelings, practice self-harm, and develop drug addiction to deal with the condition. These outcomes, however, differ from person to person as individuals handle their emotional distress differently.
Stress and Epigenetics
Epigenetics refers to the study of heritable changes in gene expression caused by activation and deactivation of genes without altering the underlying DNA sequence. Stress leads to DNA modifications in the brain hence may result in neurological disorders (Lehrner & Yehuda, 2018). During terrible events, the body produces hormones called glucocorticoids that affect many body systems. These effects are intervened by the (HPA); hypothalamic- pituitary- adrenal axis. In the case of a trauma survivor, a modification of a glucocorticoid receptor gene Nr3c1 has been observed( Lehrner & Yehuda, 2018). An initial link between genetics, chronic stress, and mental illness was observed in mice. The mice exposed to chronic stress had gene changes over time, while the genes remained constant for those in normal condition. The modified genes were those related to mental stability and illnesses. Similar DNA alterations have also been observed in the brains of depression victims who committed suicide.
Historical Stressful Event Analysis; The Dutch Famine (1944)
The Dutch famine occurred in the German-occupied Netherlands during the 1944-1945 winter towards the Second World War (Grażyna & Miroslav, 2020). The Dutch supported Allied Forces with the hope that a strike would stop the transport of German troops. This, however, was a big fail that earned the Netherlands severe punishment. A German ...