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Selye’s notion of ‘ stress’ stresses that disease is induced by stress. Selye (1956) essentially views stress as a manifestation of responses to environmental changes. Brushing aside the molecular level of explanation, the causative constellation of a mass of disease is seen as residing at the environmental level (Syme, 1977: 73). Inner forces are in harmony with one another and with the environment under ordinary conditions. When intrusion upon this harmony occurs with the alteration in the environment, such a situation creates a situation of instability and disequilibrium. The situations in which these causes operate are of utmost concern in deciphering the equlibric imbalance. While Selye emphasizes physical agents as stressors, psychogenic factors and social circumstances are seen as includible in the list of stressors. Distressful events get converted into stressors and compound the odds and contribute to one falling a prey to some dreaded microbes or organ malfunction. Developing symptoms is one response to stress (Wolff, 1953). The mere manifestation of symptoms itself is stressful. The means of manifestation are as unlimited as the forms it takes are at variance with one another. The symptoms of stress can be subsumed under three categories, namely, physiological, psychological and social. Stress may be physiological when relief from pain, which rankles in the heart, eludes. It may be psychological when any troubling experience works on the unguarded castle of the mind engendering depression. A number of diseases such as hysterical paralysis and anesthesia, asthma, gastric ulcers, hypertension, and ulcerative colitis are shown to have a large psychological component in their etiology. It may be social when demands stemming from a variety of relationships remain without being met. As a consequence of interpenetration of these dimensions, social stress can cause biological symptoms and vice versa (Mauksch, 1977: 132). Since fear or anxiety invariably accompanies these symptoms, these symptoms, when unchecked, may mean death, personal degradation and loss of chances. Disruption in organized activities and social relationship in the family and elsewhere is the most likely successor. Keeping these aspects in view, a sense of caution needs to be sounded emphasizing that ‘fear is the one that one must fear most’. Pierce (1895: 119) is of the opinion that ‘ the organ representing fear sustains a special relation to the functions of the heart both in health and disease. Bright hopes characterize pulmonary complaints as certainly as cough. Exquisite susceptibility of mind indicates equally extreme sensibility of body, and those persons capable of fully expressing the highest emotions are especially susceptible to bodily sensations.’ The forces in the social, economic and cultural conditions produce diseases. Maladaptation of organisms to their environment account for diseases. For Rene Dubos (1959), a microbiologist of renown, man’s health lies in his adaptation to his environment. Since stress is related to the pace of change, environmental stress is unlikely to disappear considering the fact that change is dynamic and ubiquitous. Formulating the hypothesis of ‘cultural lag’, Ogburn (1922: Part IV) in his influential work on Social Change analyzed that a large proportion of social problems afflicting mankind are a function of cultural lag. Various health problems including mental health, poverty and so on are seen as involving cultural lag. New diseases develop with every change in environment calling for new adaptations to be made. As stress-inducing environment increases and becomes a part of our day to day experience, noise, pace, rate of change, activity and the like have a bearing on the incidence of diseases. Calling cancer, heart disease, disorders of the cerebral system and so on as the ‘diseases of civilization’, Dubos views that our ways of life may have nefarious effects. According to him both affluence as well as poverty can constitute a cause of disease. He goes on to add that lack of nutriment, protein deficiency, malaria, tuberculosis, infestation with worms, and a host of ill-defined gastrointestinal disorders are the greatest killers to day in under privileged countries and in those just becoming industrialized. With the improvement in standards of living, the toll taken by malnutrition and infection decreases rapidly. However, other diseases become more prevalent and pronounced. Prosperity brings in its wake heart diseases, which constitute the leading cause of death. Cancers, vascular lesions affecting the central nervous system and accidents come to occupy the second, third and fourth places in accounting for death in such countries. Chronic disorders such as arthritis and allergies affect those who are well fed and well sheltered. Ironically, these disorders are ‘cruel only to be kind’ in the sense they often ruin life, but do not destroy it. An ‘inner sense of death’ or a sense of ‘living deadness’ emanating from our confrontation with the environment becomes pervasive. The multitude of men ‘breathing with souls so dead’ is on the increase. Looking beyond the organ system, the total needs, both physical and emotional, become important facets in the administration of medicare. Some drop of humanity and sensitivity to emotional needs hold the ‘key’ key to ensuring the diminishing return of stressors.
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