I need an explanation for this Psychology question to help me study.

Managing Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

The ancient proverb “Time heals all wounds” does not appear to apply in every situation within the context of traumatic stress. With the emotional and physical damage prolonged traumatic stress can cause, it may not be enough to have lived through it. Whether you seek relief in the understanding of a friend, a family member, a member of the clergy or your own personal life philosophies, you are relying on your pre-existing resources in an attempt to come to terms with your experiences. When your circle of social support and resources lacks the comfort that can only come from someone with similar experiences, there are an abundance of online newsgroups, forums, and blogs that bring people with common experiences together. In addition, psychotherapy has proved to be a beneficial approach for the treatment of traumatic stress.

Up to this point, you have examined multiple stress management techniques. For this assignment, you apply stress management techniques to build on your Final Project. Review T.A. Lang’s Developing Patient Education Handouts resource as well as the “Sampling of Stress Management Techniques” handout. Conduct online research for additional examples of patient information brochures. Then consider the population you selected for your Week 3 Final Project assignment. Select three stressors common to this population. Review the Handout Guidelines and the literature you obtained in your search for stress management techniques and patient information brochures. Consider the information you might include on three different handouts that provide stress management techniques you might use for this population.

The Assignment (3 one-page handouts)

• Create a different handout for each of the three stress management techniques you might use for the population you selected in Week 3.
• Apply the Handout Guidelines to the creation of your handouts.

Support your Final Project assignment with specific references to all resources used in its preparation. You are to provide a separate reference list for all resources, including those in the Learning Resources for this course.

Este es el trabajo de la semana 3

Stress Management

Select and Describe A Target Population.

The target population for this study will focus on African American with cancer, living in South Carolina. Cancer disparities are linked with a lot of social determinants of health that are connected to exposure to stressors ion high-risk, underserved populations. The target population will be Blacks living in South Carolina who have a cancer. There are a lot of Blacks in South Carolina where there is plantation hyper-segregation between them and the Whites and the topography and climate is similar to that found in Africa, thus contributing to retention of health behaviors and African culture (Hébert et al., 2015).

Common Stressors and Related Health Issues for This Population

Community-level stressors may include marital instability, housing instability, and neighborhood violence. Personal-level psychosocial stressors is of a wide variety that include job strain and life events. It may include individual traits, including anger-related characters and negative effects that most of the times increases the distress responses and the intensity and the frequency of stress exposure. In the seventeenth century, most of the Black in South Carolina were working as slaves in rice plantations where their diet was controlled by the plantation owners. The diet had added preservatives salt which could add to stressors of slaverly (Hébert et al., 2015). Additionally, they went through physical exhaustion, environmental stressors, violence, and lack of access to health services, which led to the loss of buffering cultural traditions. Racism has lingering effects that include psychosocial stress and downstream impacts on issues that have inferences for cancer like sleep disturbances and inflammation (Brandolo, Brady ver Halen, Libby & Pencille, 2011).

Historical factors give the background to current stressors that may produce epigenetic impacts for the descendants of African Slaves. In South Carolina, epigenetic effects occur in diet, contextual stressors, chronic poverty, destruction of adaptive social ties, allostatic overload, and chronic unpredictable (Hébert et al., 2015). The skin color of my target population is related to blood pressor, body mass index, and stress, which are risk factors related with many health consequences including cancer. Study shows that influence of African-American pastors’ food distinctiveness on church-level factors linked to physical activity and diet messaging (Hebert et al., 2015). Also, stress related to racism is associated with cognitive and psychological cancer risk factors and high blood pressure.

Today, The Blacks in South Carolina are mostly employed in low-status, low-control, insecure, service sector jobs, which entail little or no physical activities and require working for long hours (Hébert et al., 2015). They reside in impoverished urban communities our rural areas that are not safe, have limited access to health foods, and have little amenities for physical activities. A diet that is calorie-dense or have less nutrients, lack of physical activities, and high rates of diabetes and obesity are cancer risk factors. According to CDC, overweight and obesity are connected to about 13 types of cancer (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010).

Select and Empirically Support Three Stress Management Strategies

Stress and stress management strategies are affected by the age, and the process of aging is prejudiced by stress and coping. Across the lifetime, a person experiences changes in the types of stressors and in the strategies best fit to cope with those stressors (Aldwin & Yancura, 2011). In most cases, the vulnerability to stress increases as a person get old, yet stress may contribute to old age adaptability by forming or instigating the concept for personal development in adulthood, through a process known as stress-related growth or posttraumatic (Davis, Burleson & Kruszewski, 2011).

Psychosocial Interventions

Being diagnosed and undergoing cancer treatment is traumatizing and caused psychological stress especially in the first year due to treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Psychosocial interventions aim at promoting psychosocial adaptation to these challenges and may modulate physiological processes such as immune and neuroendocrine that are relevant for health outcomes especially patients with breast cancer (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). This intervention entails adjuvant therapy as the patients suffer from anxiety on the effects of the treatment, physical complications, and death. Community activities that will bring the people together and that are in correspondence to the African American culture are also important in extending cultural and family ties and thus contributing to reduction of cancer disparities (Davis et al., 2011).

Policies That Reduce Oppression

The world health organization, policy makers and community groups such as churches should create strategies that will see an end to oppression of vulnerable groups. The Black community in South Carolina are oppressed making them vulnerable to health effects of social inequality that prevent the unequal health outcomes of social inequality (Hébert et al., 2015). There should be an increase of resources for ethnic minorities to deal with stressors, like efforts to increase community empowerment or encouraging positive coping approaches, which will decrease the negative health impacts of stress.

Education on health activities

Physical activities help an individual to function better, feel better, and sleep better. People should be encouraged to be active, work out for them to live a healthy life (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Despite my population target having minimum amenities, such as gyms, the community should be educated on other methods that they can exercise without any costs. For example, running, hiking and walking, will go a long way to keep them fit. Policy makers should also play part and increase physical activities in South Carolina.

Explain why these strategies are appropriate for the target population.

Psychosocial intervention is important to my target group as it provides psychological adaptation to challenges that cancer patients especially the Blacks undergo (Brandolo et al., 2011). Adjuvant therapy have also ben linked to immunologic outcome measures and this is clear that the treatment plays a positive role in the patient disease outcomes. This intervention provides the patient with relaxation which have positive effects on non-specific immune indicators (Aldwin et al., 2011)

As mentioned earlier, obesity and high levels of cholesterols are cancer risk factors. I am sure that the strategy of working out will help reduce excess fat in the body. Additionally, study shows that working out and taking part in physical activities helps the mind to relax and thus reducing stress cancer (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Therefore, an initiative on physical activity of my target group will work out and help them reduce stress and thus improving their overall quality of life and health, which will reduce healthcare costs.

Most of the people in my target group use unhealthy coping approaches to stress such s the use of alcohol and tobacco. As such, policies that teach on better coping strategies will help them deal with stress appropriately. Also, interventions to improve their living standards will help deal with stressors that come from poverty, racism and violence cancer (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010).

References

Aldwin, C. M. & Yancura, L. (2011). Stress, coping, and adult development. In R. J. Contrada & A. Baum (Eds.), The handbook of stress science: Biology, psychology, and health (pp. 263–274). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.

Brandolo, E., Brady ver Halen, N., Libby, D., & Pencille, M. (2011). Racism as a psychosocial stressor. In R. J. Contrada & A. Baum (Eds.), The handbook of stress science: Biology, psychology, and health (pp. 167–184). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2010). Chronic disease prevention and health promotion. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/index.htm

Davis, M. C., Burleson, M. H., & Kruszewski, D. M. (2011). Gender: Its relationship to stressor exposure, cognitive appraisal/coping processes, stress responses, and health outcomes. In R. J. Contrada & A. Baum (Eds.), The handbook of stress science: Biology, psychology, and health (pp. 247–261). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.

Hébert, J. R., Braun, K. L., Kaholokula, J. K. A., Armstead, C. A., Burch, J. B., & Thompson, B. (2015). Considering the role of stress in populations of high-risk, underserved community networks program centers. Progress in community health partnerships: research, education, and action, 9, 71.