Coping Stressful Situation - Education, Personality Development

Understanding Stress: Beyond Reduction, Management and Coping

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 10 May 2014 03:02:00 +0000

David Bedrick
Speaker, Counselor, Author of "Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology"
Posted: 05/08/2014 12:31 pm EDT Updated: 05/08/2014 12:59 pm EDT
Article from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Sometimes it appears as if "stress" is the cause for all that ails us. We are told everything from sleep and laugh more to get massages, exercise, and deep breathe. So how come we're all still so stressed?

Everyone's talking about stress these days. Each day I hear people say "I'm so stressed," and it is one of the most written about areas in psychology today. Listening and reading, we could easily conclude that stress is the cause for all that ails us. Feeling physically ill? Stress. Not sleeping? Stress. Having relationship problems? Stress. Forgetting things? Stress. Feeling depressed? Stress. Eating, drinking, drugging too much? Stress.

The literature is more than ample with research, implication, and assertion strengthening this assumption. Accordingly, stress can make us ill, weaken our immune systems, make it hard to manage our emotions, damage our relationships, cause us to drink, smoke and use substances, cause us to age more quickly, impair our memory, keep us awake at night, bring on anxiety, depression, and anger, and interfere with our sex life. [1] It wouldn't be too much to say that stress kills.

Not to worry -- the cure is nearby waiting to descend on anyone open to "getting help" from their friends, blogs, writers, counselors, and more. I am reminded of that old adage, "If all we have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Well, if the notion of "stress" dominates our diagnosis and understanding of everything that ails us, we shouldn't be surprised to find indicators of stress everywhere we look. All we need now is the "cure" for stress and we'd all feel a lot happier.

The so-called "cures" are indeed prevalent. We are told to unwind with friends, sleep more, change our diets, laugh, think positively, get massages, meditate, take more quiet time, exercise, pray, practice yoga, listen to relaxation tapes, and deep breathe. [2]

The advice from the literature is essentially the same, telling us how to calm down, relax, and take it easy. This counsel is packaged in the notions and language of "stress reduction," "stress management," and "coping with stress" -- all phrases that assume that the stress itself has little or no usefulness or is not in need of deeper understanding and transformation. Stress is to be gotten rid of like an illness. [3]

This bias, however, has serious drawbacks to it, causing us to misunderstand the background psychological process and dynamics of stress.

First, some stress needs to be amplified rather than relieved, and the power behind the stressor needs to be integrated. For example, while teaching a psychology class to massage school students, I asked them what they would do with the tension in my shoulders. One after another they came over to me and rubbed my shoulders in order to relax them. In response to some students, I eased my shoulders, allowing them to drop; for other students I moved my shoulders around as if I were almost stretching them mostly pushing them up against their hands. For people who would simply automatically relax, their interventions were just right. But there is another kind of person whose tension indicates that they have more energy in their shoulders and selves and they may need to use that energy in order to later relax. The same is true for people in more psychological areas of their lives. Some need to relax, take it easy, or be gentler with themselves. But others need to push back and really use the power and force that is in them. For the second kind of person, stress "reduction" in the form of advice to take it easy and relax will be unsuccessful. If you try to relieve this stress, the stress will simply re-arise because the person needs to learn to use the energy in their system instead of letting it go.

Secondly, some stress is caused by a background neglect of something -- a calling, a project, or a passion. For example, consider a client who had a big dream for his life, but after entering a serious and committed relationship began to let go of his dream so that he could be more present and available to his partner. This man described himself as incredibly stressed out; it would be easy for most people to quickly jump in and try to help him manage and reduce his stress. However, pregnant in the energy of what he called "stress" was a power and desire to go back to his dream and work to fulfill it. This general principle is true for many of us. Most people are not free to be as powerful, direct, and intense as they really are. When this is the case, this energy becomes somatized and psychologized -- meaning it feels in our bodies like tension and often gets labeled as "stress." This man didn't need to relax more, he needed to use the tension inside of him to resist a patriarchal role in relationship and take on the heavy lifting of his deeper dreams. Relieving his stress will not be sustainable because what he considers "stress" is actually the result of something in his life that is not getting attention.

Finally, stress reduction and stress management may not be the best ways to address the specific things that people are actually stressed about (the content of their stress). For example, people report being the most stressed by lack of sleep and concern for their weight. Is stress reduction and management the best medicine for these ills? As for concerns about sleep, we know that at least 40 million Americans each year suffer from chronic, long-term sleep disorders each year, and an additional 20 million experience occasional sleeping problems. About 60 million Americans a year have insomnia frequently or for extended periods of time, which leads to even more serious sleep deficits. Insomnia tends to increase with age and affects about 40 percent of women and 30 percent of men. It is often the major disabling symptom of an underlying medical disorder. Will advising people to relax, cope, or reduce their stress help them sleep? Most experts in this area recommend consistent sleep schedules, watching what we eat and drink, creating nighttime rituals, exercising during the day, and not taking naps. Stress can be important, but it's rarely on top of the list.

How about worrying about weight? Will telling people to relax offer any solace? First, it is important to note that people only sustain weight loss about 5-10 percent of the time despite it being a $60 billion industry. In addition, research indicates that people, especially women, are regularly cruel to their bodies. In my own research, I have learned that loving one's body is not about relaxing or taking it easy; instead, it is a difficult confrontation with cultural values, pressures, and norms as well as real changes in one's life-relationships, work, and more. In this case, relaxing will not help; instead we need to either change the culture's pressures and criticisms about body image or help people make propound changes in their life. Telling people to relax is relatively superficial given the dilemma people face and will likely be ineffective.

I have no doubt that some people who are stressed need help to cope, reduce, and manage their stress. I myself have benefited from this advice at times. However, this orientation risks being too shallow, dumbing down our understanding. We need more critical and psychological reflection so that the deep and powerful things people suffer from aren't made superficial by quick fix answers like, "Don't worry, be happy" or "Relax, take it easy, let go, and don't get so stressed out."

Five Simple Ways To Reduce Stress At Work

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 03 May 2014 04:20:00 +0000

William Arruda, Contributor
Article from http://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/
Posted 4/15/2014 @ 8:15AM

Stress impedes success and it prevents you from building your personal brand in productive ways. When you’re stressed, you don’t think clearly and behave in ways that are counter to who you are. You become paralyzed and less productive. You impact relationships with your team and colleagues. All of this has a negative impact on how people perceive you – on your personal brand.

Let’s face it, work can be stressful. In fact, occupational stress has been defined as a global epidemic by the United Nations’ International Labor Organization. According to ComPsych’s 2012 Stress Pulse survey on the effect of stress on daily productivity, 41% of respondents indicated they lose 15 to 30 minutes of productivity a day and 36% said they lose one hour or more per day.

Workplace stress makes people behave in off-brand ways. When they’re stressed, they become the person people avoid or complain about. Do you know that person? Are you that person?

The impact stressed people have on those around them is what workplace stress management expert Jordan Friedman, aka the Stress-Coach, calls “second-hand stress.” According to Friedman, “Second-hand stress impacts you and those around you and it’s hazardous to your brand. Stress shuts down two-way communication, hinders problem solving and sends an ‘I’m more important than you’ message.” It is a major brand detractor. You may feel that workplace stress is outside your control – and with some stressors, that’s certainly the case.

Regardless of what causes your stress, you need to deal with it if you want to build a consistent, powerful brand. How you deal with stress is something that is under your control. That means, know your stress triggers, and learn what type of stress reduction works best for you. Friedman says “Stress impacts performance and job satisfaction. Knowing how to recognize and manage your stress is the single most valuable leadership skill you can master.” To help you find the stress reduction techniques that are right for you, here are five resources you can put to work… at work:

1. Watch. In this brief “Quick Calm” video, you’ll learn a simple but powerful technique to instantly reduce stress. Bookmark it or add it to your playlist so you can get to it quickly when stress mounts.

2. Listen. Get a free account at live365.com and subscribe to the meditation channel. When you need a calming break, listen to ‘The Cosmic Island” for a minute or so and watch the stress drip away. If you prefer Songza, the Thunderstorm Sounds playlist will do the trick.

3. Read. This workbook by Elizabeth Robbins Eshelman and Matthew McKay gives you step-by-step techniques for calming the body and mind.

4. Learn. Take a class. Learn it Live features hundreds of classes – many are free – focused on health and well-being. Here’s a popular webinar with some truly helpful tips: It’s recorded, so you can watch it during your lunch hour.

5. Download. This Stressbusters app from TheStressCoach.com is replete with stress-busting tools and techniques to make even the most type A person chill. There are so many great resources, you’re sure to find one that will take you from distressed to de-stressed. Don’t add “stress-case” to your brand attributes. Identify the best ways for you to reduce stress, then practice them when you feel a bout of ‘hair on fire’ coming on!

William Arruda, Contributor
Article from http://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/
Posted 4/15/2014 @ 8:15AM

6 Stress Management Tips for Moms

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 04:11:00 +0000

By Tara Campbell
Founder of PowerHouse Growers.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tara-campbell/
Posted: 04/14/2014 12:03 pm EDT Updated: 04/14/2014 12:59 pm EDT

When we become parents, the way we make decisions changes forever and single parents take it to a whole other level. I've had the pleasure of staying at home with my children and working outside the home, but I have always been a "working mom" -- after all, a mom works 24/7. Each situation carries with it a set of unique circumstances, but the solutions for a mom to be healthy are the same.

My top takeaways from my experiences as a "working mom" are listed as helpful solutions for you. As a mother, it is important to take necessary steps to ensure that you don't feel guilty about your career choices or suffer from anxiety overload. Doing this is crucial to creating space for your health and your family's health.

1. Focus on Being Present

Whether you choose to work at home or at the office, the most important thing is to focus on being present. Your children and family will benefit from your quality time over quantity time -- every time. This is a hard one, but if you use the systems below it becomes much easier.

2. Transition Between the Office and Home

Whatever works for you, do it! Maybe it's a drive, a coffee or a visit with a friend but try to transition between work and home mode. You will feel more connected, far less strained and your children will thank you.

3. Hire a Housekeeper

If a clean house makes everything in your world better, why wouldn't you take care of yourself and your family by hiring a housekeeper? You can take your children on an adventure to do something fun outdoors, teach them a new skill and come home to a tidy house. You will no longer feel pressured to do both while feeling unfulfilled because neither one received your full attention. It will also create space for you to enjoy your children.

4. Find a Granny Nanny

While I was exploring the options of hiring someone to assist me with my children, I decided that I wanted my girls to have a granny nanny. Someone semi-retired that didn't have family close by that could be nurturing while I was at the office. This way they could bake, read, do homework and be exposed to multi-generational systems and ideas. This is a great option if you work at home and want to get out of the house. This will allow you the freedom to run your errands or take some personal time while your children are home baking cookies, do some gardening, get help with homework.

5. Hire a Personal Assistant

This one is my personal favorite. When my daughters were 14 and 8, I hired a law student. The interviewing process was intense because I was looking for someone who could love my girls while doing tasks with them that needed to be done. Ashley would pick up the girls up from school, take them to the park, teach them new skills, prepare healthy meals with them and enforce rules like cleaning their rooms, respecting others and practicing violin. I would text her my list of tasks before she picked up the girls from school, then they were off -- laughing and giggling while taking care of family business. This was healthy for all of us and we added a new family member. The girls had a new big sister figure, Ashley made some cash and when I came home, I was able to enjoy the girls without feeling anxious about tasks that needed to be done. But she is on to them -- not letting them get away with too much and setting boundaries because she loves them. She is my right-hand lady and friend.

6. Schedule Your Personal Time As Appointments

It took some time for me to figure this one out. Your personal time is important -- critical to your family's health. Personal time may mean getting your nails done, visiting a friend, sitting by yourself or running around for the family, but it's all important. Schedule these events as appointments and encourage your family to do the same. Sometimes as parents, we can be easily convinced that our personal appointments aren't as serious as what is going on in our children's lives.

The ROI on Moms' Health

When I was looking at the associated cost of hiring help, I had a hard time justifying it. After a very short time (two days), I realized I couldn't afford not to. Take it from me -- it took 15 years of raising children and the pressures of juggling it all to realize that these are the solutions to every mother's mental health!

As mothers, we want to give our children our time and the best versions of ourselves. These are ways you can do that. These tips will take some research, planning and budgeting, but once they are in place you will never look back.

* I may be speaking to moms but this can apply to dads as well. Mother's Day is coming up - what a great gift idea!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tara-campbell/

PeopleKeys Managing Stress Course: New Online Class Explores the Connection Between Stress and Personality Type

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Fri, 24 May 2013 07:25:00 +0000

Kaitlyn Miller

Article from http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10742029.htm

Today PeopleKeys announces their newest product, the DISC Managing Stress Course. There are so many factors that go into stress - it's important to realize that what stresses you and how you should handle it depends on your personality style.

Boardman, Ohio (PRWEB) May 21, 2013

Recent data from the American Medical Association estimates that 43% adults have experienced negative effects on their health due to stress. The AMA similarly believe that the impact of stress is much more significant than many people realize, attributing 75% to 90% of all doctor’s visits to stress-related illnesses.

Stress is something that many Americans accept as a normal part of daily life.

Unfortunately, left untreated stress can cause a great many ill-effects on a person’s physical and emotional well-being. Serious medical conditions such as hypertension, chronic headache, depression, anxiety, asthma, diabetes, heart problems, stomach pain, and skin conditions are in many cases a direct product of excessive stress.

Currently, there are quite a few treatment options for individuals suffering from extreme chronic stress. Exercise, meditation, changes in diet, yoga, are all commonly suggested stress management techniques. Yet because individual physical and emotional responses to stress are so varied, blanket solutions like these are rarely effective for everyone. Rather than finding ways to treat the effects of stress, experts believe that it is better to focus on the root of the problem through understanding the situations that trigger stress in the first place.

Just as individual reactions to stress are so different, stress triggers also vary widely from person to person. Recent research from PeopleKeys shows that the most successful way to determine an individual’s unique stress triggers is through an understanding of personality type. To that end, PeopleKeys recently announced the launch of their personality-based DISC Managing Stress Course.

The DISC Managing Stress Course can be taken online in under two hours, and provides powerful diagnostic tools for identifying a person’s personality type, levels of stress, and stress triggers. The DISC Stress Management Course begins with a comprehensive personality test designed to identify the personality type of the test-taker. Once personality type has been determined, the Stress Management Couse provides insight into the ways that stress affects behavior, and provides clear and effective personality-driven strategies for preventing and managing stress. This is done with a personal stress evaluation, which allows participants to chart stress levels in ten key areas related to stress.

The course is interactive, and gages progress through short quizzes. As a preventative stress-management tool, the Managing Stress Course helps participants:

Identify common stressors based on personality type
Pinpoint individual stress triggers
Debunk facts and myths about stress
Increase understanding of the “fight or flight” response
Recognize physical and emotional symptoms of stress
Understand the difference between work mode and relaxation mode
Assess, plan, implement, and maintain a plan for chronic stress prevention
Recognize common stress signals
Achieve and maintain a healthy balance in life

You can’t change your personality in order to reduce stress, but you can learn to anticipate and manage the situations that trigger feelings of excessive stress. This takes careful self-analysis. No personality is immune to the effects of stress, but awareness is 90% of the solution.

For more information on DISC and the personality-based DISC Managing Stress Course, please contact PeopleKeys.

About PeopleKeys

PeopleKeys has been providing tools to measure the connection between personality and human behavior for over 30 years. PeopleKeys believes that an understanding of human behavior can be used to improve relationships, streamline productivity, resolve conflict, and reduce stress. For more information about PeopleKeys and their DISC solutions, please contact Marketing Manager Kaitlyn Miller at 330-599-5580 x113.

Kaitlyn Miller

Article from http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10742029.htm

Putting Stress in its Place in Your Life

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:15:00 +0000

By BROOKE MCDONALD
Article from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/

“You’ve been uptight lately,” my mom said the other day over lunch. We were celebrating my twenty-second birthday.

Although I can’t stand spicy food, I dribbled Tabasco sauce over my fajitas and took a bite, eyes immediately watering, mouth burning. I have good reasons to be uptight, I thought, shoveling the spicy food into my mouth.

The past few weeks, life had seemed to be a constant stream of stresses, and I hadn’t handled them well. A new job was giving me a steep learning curve. Rush hour had been brutal. I wasn’t sleeping well. Freelance projects on the side took up all my spare time.

All this had contributed to irritation in my interactions with family and friends, frustration at things I couldn’t change, and super-sensitivity to any perceived failures at work or at home.

Suddenly, the awareness of my super-stress hit me like a mouthful of hot jalapeños. I realized how ridiculous I must sound to my mom. Twenty-two should be a fiesta, a time of exploration and growth. But the stressors I was encountering — typical stressors for adults of any age — were sabotaging my youth, health, and everyday happiness.

April is National Stress Awareness Month. Considering that it’s tax season, we’re a ways off from another calendar holiday, and winter storms where I live have kept our spring season gloomy, it seems fitting.

It’s no news that unceasing high stress has a negative effect upon health. According to WebMD, 40 percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects from stress. As health care professionals promote public awareness about the common causes and symptoms of stress this month, we’d do well to consider the long-term medical effects, too.

Two recent studies agree that negative responses to everyday stress can have a negative effect on your long-term health.

A longitudinal study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Irvine found that reacting negatively to stress from even small events increased the risk of psychological distress and mood disorders among the 700 adults they studied.

Penn State’s study of the effects of stress was even more fascinating. Researchers spoke on the phone with over 2,000 adults for eight nights in a row, asking simple questions about the events of their day and their mood. In both projects, researchers found that people who handled stress badly on a day-to-day basis were more susceptible to ill mental health and chronic diseases later in life.

It seems that the research supports the age-old quip “attitude is everything.” The idea that our long-term health because of our present choices is not new, but it should be a wake-up call to those of us who do not pay attention to how we are reacting to our stress.

Beyond being aware of our stress this month, let’s take one step further and make a plan to react better to it.

Some Tips for De-Stressing Your Life

In honor of National Stress Awareness Month, I’m focusing on changing the things I can and reacting more positively to the things I can’t. Here’s what this will look like in my daily life:

Stop fueling frustration. When I feel a burst of work-related or personal frustration, I’m not going to waste emotional energy fuming about it. My goal is to think of one thing I can do right now to make the situation better, and do it. Fueling the fire of my irritation will only tie my hands to solve whatever problem I’m facing. This positive, action-oriented reaction will help me keep stress at bay.
Keep things in perspective by writing them down. Lots of our problems aren’t even worth our stress and can seem especially silly when you actually articulate them. This month I will name my stressors on paper and gauge how worthy they are of distress. I’m willing to bet most of them aren’t worth worrying over.
Spend time with positive people. I heard on the radio recently that if you are easily prone to stress and discouragement, you should intentionally surround yourself with people who are opposite. I’m going to make time in my busy schedule for quality time with the sunny souls in my life and soak in their positive reactions.
Writer and theologian Charles Swindoll has said “Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it.” With recent psychological studies showing the importance of how we react, it’s extremely important to be aware of our reactions and work on reacting more positively.

BROOKE MCDONALD
Article from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/

3 Easy, Inexpensive Ways To Manage Stress

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:51:00 +0000

by MELISASource in Career
May 13, 2013 10:53 am

We all know the damaging health effects that stress can have on our minds and bodies. It has even been deemed as a link to long-term conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Yet with so much happening in the course of a day, it is becoming more challenging for the traditional methods of alleviating stress to be completely successful.

Stress has now changed from being something to “treat” or “fix” to something that requires continuous health maintenance. The more we try to do to end it completely, the more that happens to bring it back -- and over time, this cycle can pack a hefty punch to overall wellness.

In other words: The trips to the spa and mini-vacations are still really great ways to help with stress, but with the state of the world, there is an even greater need to practice stress management daily.

Below are three simple—and inexpensive things you can incorporate in your daily routine to help keep stress at bay.

Get Up, Get Out, and Get Something

Breaking away from the stresses of life doesn’t have to necessarily mean doing something elaborate or costly. Getting up and out of your current environment and getting one of the following may help immensely:

Fresh air
Change of scenery (even if it is just to a different room)
A short walk (sometimes 3-10 minutes is all that is needed)
A quick “vent-chat” with a good friend

Turn It Off…Turn It On

We all love to be "in the know" when it comes to what’s happening in the world, but sometimes the constant and fast-paced feed of images and information can actually do more to elevate our stress rather than reduce it. And trust me: your body will definitely alert you: your blood pressure, respirations, and heart rate will begin to rise the more you watch your screen.

Be sure that you are making not just one, but several moments throughout your day to turn it all off—disconnect from social media and the internet, and unglue yourself from the TV. Do not just put the phone on silent—turn it off too and put it out of sight.

Get yourself into some silence if you can. Or, turn on something more soothing like relaxing music, nature sounds, or motivational/inspirational speaking messages instead. Your vital signs will thank you.

Get In The Habit Of "Doing The Most"

Don’t just say that you want to keep your stress managed—do all that you can to make it a way of life. That means, assessing your day, associations, and behaviors on a regular basis to remove and otherwise guard yourself from what adds stress to your day in advance. Ongoing tweaks of habits and daily rituals here and there are the key to ensuring your mental and emotional wellness remains in balance.

Remember, your mind is a temple—and the only one that is responsible for guarding what is fed into your temple and its care is you. Also remember that it is never a good practice to allow stress to build up. You do not have to wait until vacation time or until you have "extra money" to do something about it. By using a few simple practices to make stress management a lifestyle, you can ensure that your temple is secure for not just a moment, but for life.

What are some things that you do to make stress management a part you’re your daily lifestyle? Share with me below or tell me about it at: melisasource@yahoo.com

Online Stress Management Programs Found Effective

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:42:00 +0000

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on May 1, 2013
Article from http://psychcentral.com/news/

Online Stress Management Programs Found Effective Improving access, enhancing quality and lowering the costs of health care services is a central tenet to health care reform.

Policymakers and providers believe health information technology and web-based platforms can accomplish these goals. However, definitive proof of concept has been a work in progress.

Now, a new study shows that the use of an Internet-based stress management programs (ISM) can effectively reduce stress for a sustainable period.

As reported in the in Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Cleveland Clinic researchers discovered online stress management programs increase accessibility for individuals affected by chronic stress at a lesser cost than traditional methods.

Furthermore, the stress reduction achieved by an ISM is comparable to face-to-face stress management.

Researchers evaluated three-hundred study participants after completion of an eight-week ISM program.

Participants received online relaxation practice materials, strategies to help cope with life’s stressors, stress assessments at the beginning and end of the program, and daily topics to inspire participants to continue the meditation and relaxation techniques.

Upon comparison of program participants to individuals placed in a control group, ISM recipients showed a significant decrease in perceived stress from high levels to average, as well as greatly improved emotional wellbeing.

Results confirmed a positive correlation between the number of meditations completed per week and perceived stress reduction.

“Our recent findings provide individuals and employers with a new option to consider for themselves or their employees’ stress management,” said Michael Roizen, M.D., Chief Wellness Officer at Cleveland Clinic.

“Unmanaged stress causes some of the highest healthcare costs for employers and has a lasting impact on everyone; this study implies such health effect may be readily reduced.”

Using Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) to measure a person’s perception of stress, individual results were based on a 0 (best) to 40 scale.

Study participants’ stress levels prior to ISM averaged 23.05, much higher than the U.S. norm, 13.7 for females and 12.1 for males.

Active participants demonstrated a substantial stress score improvement of 4.04 after the program. Individuals who completed five meditations per week were likely to experience a 6.12 decrease in perceived stress scores vs. practicing once per week.

New research identifies chronic stress as a major public health issue and a factor associated with increased health risk and chronic disease.

Comparable to smoking, psychological distress is more significant in terms of health risks to blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes.

A national survey from the American Psychological Association (Stress in America) showed that 75 percent of American adults continue to report high levels of stress despite an improving economy, with little accessibility to a feasible stress management program.

And, for most Americans, work is the most stressful life factor.

ISM focuses heavily on achieving a state of mindfulness through relaxation and meditation, and guided imagery wheras face-to-face stress management programs often include massage therapy, exercise, diet modification, acupuncture, and meditation.

Researchers used standard outcome measures including the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale, and the Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory, to compare the two approaches throughout the 12-week study.

The General Electric Corporation (GE) offered the ISM program to employees in three of its sites as part of the trial.

“Understanding consumer behavior related to health and healthcare is critical to advancing care delivery,” said Mitch Higashi, chief economist for GE Healthcare.

“In this case, demonstrating how workplace stress management programs could be delivered effectively in online formats provides important insights for future innovation.”

Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on May 1, 2013
Article from http://psychcentral.com/news/

Stress management tips

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 11 May 2013 08:19:00 +0000

By Cedar Crest Hospital & RTC / Special to the Herald
Article from http://kdhnews.com/stress-management-tips/article_5ffb8272-b5a2-11e2-bea0-001a4bcf6878.html

Progressive relaxation (start at your toes and work up to your head, tightening and releasing the muscles in each area).
Squeeze a ball or lemon.
Take a deep breath, tuck in your tummy and count to 10. Then, breathe out slowly and count to 10. Think the word, “calm”, then the word, “serene.” Other calming words work, too.
Exercises such as muscle stretching, yoga, sports.
Meditation and/or prayer.
Visualize a scene that is pleasant, soothing, or brings back happy memories.
Express yourself through art, writing or a hobby.
Plan your time and prioritize.
Pace yourself. Take one step at a time.
Cognitive restructuring — changing your perception of the situation can reduce or eliminate stress.
Tell yourself that this, too, shall pass.
Understanding and managing the stress you can’t avoid (permanent situations).
Stand up and stretch.
Stand up and smile!
Find humor in situations.
Positive social interactions — do something fun.
Take a short, brisk walk.
Spend time enjoying nature and the outdoors.
Dance or do aerobics.
Games and puzzles.
Do something that changes your focus, e.g, take a bathroom break, get a glass of water. When you come back to the problem, chances are it won’t seem nearly as insurmountable.
Sleep on it. Take a second look tomorrow.
Create time for self-reflection.
Discover your vision, values and purpose. Take responsibility for creating the life you want.
Take time to smell the roses. Do something enjoyable each day.
Positive thinking — find the “silver lining.” Find the good in your stressful situation.
Dare to say, “No.” Set limits.
Be assertive but not aggressive (express your feelings without offending others).
Quit blaming yourself when you really had no control over the situation.
Be pro-active in finding peace
Find people who can nurture and support you and learn to trust appropriately
When you need help, get help. Counseling can help you to understand the root causes of stress and find solutions.
Get a good night’s rest
Eat healthily. Avoid sugar and caffeine. Drink water and juice instead.
Listen to your favorite music
Talk to a friend about your problem, don’t hold it in
Get a massage
Take a warm bath — use your favorite bath fragrance, candles, lotions
Read a book

Cedar Crest Hospital & RTC / Special to the Herald
Article from http://kdhnews.com/stress-management-tips/article_5ffb8272-b5a2-11e2-bea0-001a4bcf6878.html

Manage Your Stress Before Your Stress Manages You

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:23:00 +0000

By Lorenzo Cohen, Kira Taniguchi, and Alejandro Chaoul
Posted: 05/03/2013 8:28 am
From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lorenzo-cohen-phd/stress-management_b_3165673.html

Feeling stressed? There is a common misconception that stress is derived from a particular negative event that occurred. However, your spilled cup of coffee (the stressor) is not what caused your stress; rather it was the response to the stressor, known as the fight-or-flight response. While we cannot always control the stressors we encounter in life, we can learn how to control our reactions to the stressors.

Controlling our stress is critical. Research shows that chronic stress affects almost every biological system in our bodies. According to studies conducted on humans and animals, stress can alter the way genes get expressed and can affect the tumor microenvironment, creating a hospitable terrain for tumor growth.

Under chronic stress, it becomes more difficult to switch between the stress response, which is associated with sympathetic arousal, and relaxation, associated with parasympathetic arousal. Over time, the body will struggle to recover after a stressful event, even if the stressor is no longer present. Unmanaged chronic stress can literally speed the aging process, and it increases your risk for heart disease, and can cause sleeping difficulties, digestive problems, and even depression. Moreover, it can also cause you to forego healthy eating and exercise habits that help prevent cancer and other disease.

A key ingredient to managing chronic stress is to engage in behaviors that decrease sympathetic and increase parasympathetic arousal -- in other words, learning how to relax in stressful situations. Mind-body practices are one way to achieve better balance. Research shows that mind-body practices have a positive effect on all systems in our body, improving quality of life, reversing the harmful effects of stress, and creating fundamental changes in the way the brain functions. A recent study of cognitive behavioral stress management found this technique led to decreases in inflammatory gene expression.

Mind-body practices to help manage stress include meditation, different forms of yoga and practices like tai chi and qigong, what one could call movement-based meditations. These practices affect neurotransmitters, which are essential in maintaining a healthy balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal, therefore, helping to manage our stress response.

Mind-body practices can help decrease chronic stress by bringing balance to our bodies, and ultimately, our lives. It is clear from multiple studies examining mind-body interventions that it is important for people to consider participating in some kind of program to manage their stress and improve their quality of life. There are many different mind-body programs that can be useful. People often ask which mind-body program is the best for reducing stress and improving quality of life. The answer is the one you will do every day and make it a part of your life.

Dr. Alejandro Chaoul, assistant professor at the Integrative Medicine Program in the Department of General Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, lists some simple, very brief mind-body techniques that can be helpful during those stressful moments. The next time you become stressed, remember how important it is to manage stress and how influential our behaviors are on our brain function and our overall health and well-being, down to every cell in our body.

Pause and take a break. Just breathe with soft focus on your breath for a few minutes.
Take a moment (sitting if possible, or standing) to stretch your arms upward. As you lengthen your back, breathe deeply through your nose into your belly and back out through your nose. Lower your arms, place them on your lap and take a few deep, long, slow and calm breaths.
As you breathe normally, imagine your breath as light that nurtures you. When you breathe in, breathe in nurturing qualities -- feelings of joy, love, calm, connection to others. Each time you exhale, exhale tensions, pain, fear, anything that you do not need. Breathe in and out a few times using this technique.
When the traffic light turns red, it is a great opportunity to connect to yourself; put down your smartphone, turn off/down the radio, and pause to breathe in peace and release your thoughts and anxiety.
Whenever you wash your hands, wash your mind. As you focus on washing your hands, breathe and feel you are also clearing your mind.

Take any of the above as a "meditation pill" that you can always have with you, as techniques to help you find calm and focus in the moment.

Enjoy!

By Lorenzo Cohen, Kira Taniguchi, and Alejandro Chaoul
Posted: 05/03/2013 8:28 am
From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lorenzo-cohen-phd/stress-management_b_3165673.html

Stress study offers clues for new antidepressant drugs

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Tue, 07 May 2013 03:07:00 +0000

By Kate Kelland, Reuters
From http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/

LONDON - Scientists have worked out the way in which stress hormones reduce the number of new brain cells - a process linked to depression - and say their work should help researchers develop more effective antidepressants.

The scientists identified a protein largely responsible for the long-term detrimental effect of stress on cells.

They also successfully used an experimental drug compound to block this effect, pointing to a possible way of developing new antidepressants, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said.

Major depression affects about 20 percent of people at some time in their lives. The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that by 2020, depression will rival heart disease as the health disorder with the highest global disease burden.

Treatment for depression involves either medication or counseling - and often a combination of both.

But while there are many antidepressants on the market, including top sellers such as Prozac and Seroxat, it is widely accepted that many antidepressants work in only half of patients half of the time, and drugmakers are struggling to come up with a new generation of drugs.

Depression is linked to changes in a process called neurogenesis - the ability of the adult brain to continue producing new brain cells.

At a molecular level, stress is known to increase levels of a hormone called cortisol, which in turn acts on a receptor called the glucocorticoid receptor. But the exact mechanism behind this process has been unclear.

A team under Carmine Pariante of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, who led the research, studied human hippocampal stem cells - source of new cells in the human brain.

They gave the cells cortisol to measure the effect on neurogenesis and found that a protein called SGK1 was important in mediating the effects.

By measuring the effect of cortisol over time, they found that increased levels of SGK1 prolong the damaging impact of stress hormones on neurogenesis.

Next, the researchers used an experimental drug compound known to inhibit SGK1 and found it blocked the negative effects of stress hormones, leading to an increase in new brain cells.

The team confirmed the results by studying levels of SGK1 in animals and then in blood samples from people with depression.

By Kate Kelland, Reuters
From http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/

Is stress making you ill?

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:51:00 +0000

Stress management health centre

If you seem to suffer from the common cold a bit too often, perhaps stress is literally making you sick and tired.

By Theresa Bebbington

WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Dr Keith David Barnard

Article from webmd

11th April 2012 - Stress has already been linked to a greater risk of depression, infectious diseases and even heart disease. A recent study has looked at how stress could be causing these health problems.

What is stress?

According to the International Stress Management Association UK, stress is "the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them."

When those pressures become overwhelming, they lead to stress. A little stress can be a good thing - it is part of the fight or flight mechanism that allows us to cope with a challenge. However, being in a continual state of stress means that body chemicals used to stimulate the fight or flight response are constantly active, and this can have adverse effects on our mental and physical health.

How stress can make you ill

The research study at Carnegie Mellon University, headed by Dr Sheldon Cohen and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has for the first time been able to establish that chronic psychological stress affects the body's ability to regulate the inflammatory response, which in turn can allow the development and progression of disease.

"Inflammation is partly regulated by the hormone cortisol, and when cortisol is not allowed to serve this function, inflammation can get out of control," says Dr Cohen, a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in news release.

The study found that prolonged stress decreases tissue sensitivity to cortisol, so it could alter the effectiveness of cortisol to control the inflammatory response. To be more specific, the immune cells don't response properly to cortisol's regulatory effect, so inflammation isn't controlled. It is this runaway inflammation that allows the development of many diseases.

An earlier study by Dr Cohen showed that psychological stress made people more susceptible to developing the common cold, and he used the common cold virus for testing his theory. The symptoms of common cold are not caused by the virus itself, but are a side-effect of the inflammatory response triggered by the body to fight off the virus. The more your body tries to fight off the infection, the more symptoms of a cold you're likely to experience.

In the first study, 276 healthy adults were exposed to a common cold virus after completing an intensive stress review, and were then put into quarantine for five days. Dr Cohen concluded that in those who suffered a stressful event, the stress affected the immune cells? response to hormonal signals that normally control inflammation. These people were unable to regulate the inflammatory response and were more likely to develop cold symptoms on exposure to the virus.

In his second study, Dr Cohen assessed 79 healthy participants and their inflammatory response before exposing them to a cold virus. He monitored the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, which are chemical messengers that trigger inflammation. In this study, he found that the participants who were less able to regulate their inflammatory response produced more of these chemical messengers when they were infected.

"The immune system's ability to regulate inflammation predicts who will develop a cold, but more importantly it provides an explanation of how stress can promote disease," says Dr Cohen. "When under stress, cells of the immune system are unable to respond to hormonal control, and consequently, produce levels of inflammation that promote disease. Because inflammation plays a role in many diseases such as cardiovascular, asthma and autoimmune disorders, this model suggests why stress impacts them as well."

He added, "Knowing this is important for identifying which diseases may be influenced by stress and for preventing disease in chronically stressed people."

Is stress making you ill?

If you seem to suffer from the common cold a bit too often, perhaps stress is literally making you sick and tired.(continued)

Symptoms of stress

There are a number of psychological, emotional, physical and behavioural signs to look out for which indicate if someone is under stress:

Psychological signs

Inability to concentrate or make simple decisions
Memory lapses
Becoming rather vague
Easily distracted
Worrying
Negative thinking
Depression and anxiety

Emotional signs

Being tearful
Being irritable
Experiencing mood swings
Feeling extra sensitive to criticism
Being defensive
Feeling out of control
Lack of motivation
Being angry or frustrated
Lack of confidence or self-esteem

Behavioural signs

No time for relaxation or pleasurable activities
Prone to accidents
Increased reliance on alcohol, smoking, caffeine, recreation or illegal drugs
Becoming a workaholic
Poor time management and/or poor standards of work
Absenteeism

Physical signs

Aches/pains and muscle tension/grinding teeth
Frequent colds/infections
Allergies/rashes/skin irritations
Constipation/diarrhoea/irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
Weight loss or gain
Indigestion/heartburn/ulcers
Hyperventilating/lump in the throat/pins and needles
Dizziness/palpitations
Panic attacks/nausea
Physical tiredness
Menstrual changes/loss of libido/sexual problems
Heart problems/high blood pressure
Stress takes its toll at the workplace

Work-induced stress is a significant problem in the UK. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), between 2009 and 2010 an estimated 9.8 million working days were lost through work-related stress. For each person experiencing work-related stress, an estimated 22.6 days of work was lost - that is equal to 0.42 days per worker.

Mind, the mental health charity, reports that stress in the workplace is thought to be the second biggest occupational health problem in the UK.

Legally, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 states that organisations of more than five people are required to assess the risk of stress-related ill health arising from work activities.

Of course, employers should be considering their employees' health, but if that and their legal obligations are not providing enough incentives, perhaps they should also look at the costs to their organisations. Mind reported in June 2011, "British businesses lose an estimated £26 billion each year in sickness absence and lost productivity. With greater awareness and mental health support, they said businesses could save one-third of these costs."

Article from webmd

A neuro-musical evening on stress management

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 12:11:00 +0000

Apr 7, 2012
Article from Deccan Herald

Though each one of us despise stress, if one learns the art of managing stress, every distress can be transformed into Eustress (good stress) which is productive and provides positive results.

Patience, perseverance, family bondage, mutual support, honesty, compassion, sympathizing for the needy, empathizing with difficulties, leading a proper lifestyle with an emphasis on health matters and above all, listening to good music, goes a long way in alleviating stress.

This was the gist of the Neuro-Musical program conducted by Dr Anil Sangli, consultant neuro and spine surgeon and Sripad S, certified financial planner from Srian Envisions in Jagan Mohan Palace on recently.

The highlight was the depiction of problems faced by a 10-year old congenitally hearing impaired boy and his family in imparting basic training and guidance to indoctrinate and initiate language processing in the young brain. A hearing impaired individual becomes a mute due to the fact that he cannot process language which is an important component in thought processes.

The concepts adopted by mother Deepa Bhat and father journalist Ravindra Bhat, with guidance from the late Wing Cdr Srinivasan to teach the 10-year old chief guest Niranjan Bhat, the various nuances of speech and language, was a motivation and model for parents of many a disabled children.

The concept and methodology in which the child was made to learn language and speech has been brought out in the book ‘Moorane Kiwi’ meaning ‘The Third Ear’ by Ravindra Bhat.

This book has many technicalities in tutoring hearing-impaired individuals, which are not only simple but also innovative. The initial distress of having a hearing-impaired child was metamorphosed to Eustress by patience, perseverance and intellectual handling of the situation.

The programme also brought out various personalities providing insights in the management of strenuous and stressful situations.

Srian Envisions awarded Dhanalakshmi, presently an outreach worker at Ashakirana Hospital, with the ‘Srian wellness citizen award of the year,’ which carried a cheque and a citation. Gururaj K S, Dr Swami and Narasamma Savita provided inputs in management of concordant and discordant couples afflicted with HIV.

Musical evening

The evening musical programme commenced with a rendition of a bhajan and a duet by Sripad S and Dr Anil Sangli. In between, various scientific inputs and valuable comments by Dr Sangli, melodious songs were rendered by Sripad S, Gayathri S and Dr Snehashree N amidst live orchestra.

Swami Maheshatmanandaji of RIMSE emphasized on honesty and appropriate communication. Journalist Krishna Vattam, triumphed on his victory over cancer. Senior journalist B R Srihari, drew attention to three doctors of his life namely Dr Diet, Dr Quiet and Dr Merryman. AIR Mysore director M S Vijaya focussed upon overcoming stress in working Indian women.

Dr Javed Nayeem deplored the rise of suicides in young children and recommended counseling in schoolchildren.

Rekha Murthy and Dr H V Santhrupth - directors of Gopala Gowda Shantaveri Memorial Hospital, pointed out like-minded wealthy individuals contributing to the less priviliged.

Anuradha Nandakumar secretary of Mysore District Parents Association Empowerment for Developmentally Disabled, N Narendra - MD of Vinyas IT, Wg Cdr T S Murthy, Dr Padma Murthy, B R Pai - and others were present.

The program was a very unique, innovative, novel and unprecedented evening incorporating scientific concepts, music, heart-rendering events to inculcate healthy life styles and habits to transform any sort of stress to bliss.

Article from Deccan Herald

Boss can break the chain that leads to stress

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:41:00 +0000

SHELDON GORDON

Special to Globe and Mail Update

Published Tuesday, Apr. 03, 2012 5:00AM EDT

Article from The Globe and Mail

Three years ago, the high-tech company Cisco Canada began requiring its 1,200 employees to take vacations between Christmas and New Year’s.

“With everybody away at the same time, everyone takes their finger off the trigger. It becomes disrespectful to send people e-mails during that time. It stops the stressful cycle,” says David Clarkson, director of human resources.

Another HR innovation is that Cisco does not dictate that staff work at the office. This non-requirement has been in effect for five years, and 40 per cent of employees now work from home, at least part of the time.

“Our CFO used to work from home four days a week,” Mr. Clarkson says. “It alleviates the stress of driving back and forth every day.”

The cost of work time lost in Canada due to stress is estimated by Statistics Canada at $12-billion a year. Stress drives up absenteeism, decreases productivity and diminishes customer service. Yet while progressive companies such as Cisco adjust policies across the workplace in order to alleviate employee stress, many employers leave it up to individual managers or don’t address the issue at all.

There’s much they could do.

An employer can contribute to a lower stress level among staff by managing his or her own feelings of stress, says Marianna Paulson, a Vancouver stress management coach known as Auntie Stress. “The person who is in charge needs to set a precedent by looking after themselves. They need to learn techniques to manage stress in the moment. Our feelings are felt by other people. If [a manager] is calm around you, you tend to be calmer.”

Bosses, she says, need to show faith in their employees and not micro-manage them. That means keeping open lines of communication and giving employees the resources they need.

“It also involves knowing, understanding and showing appreciation for what your employees are going through. If employees feel valued, you’ll get more out of them. If they feel appreciated, it lowers their stress,” Ms. Paulson says.

Colleen Alexander, a human resources consultant in Bedford, N.S., encourages supervisors to get together with their staff to discuss which of their tasks can be postponed.

“Employees usually know that there’s work that they do that’s become redundant or is not as much of a priority as it used to be. That way, they can focus on what they do need to do.”

It’s also crucial that the workload, especially when onerous, is fairly distributed. “The spirit of that approach,” Ms. Alexander says, “is to work with the person who already has a full slate – being tasked with things to do that require their subject matter expertise – and determine what kind of tasks can be carved off and given to other employees as a developmental opportunity.”

Employers can also ease stress by doing a better job of change management, Ms. Alexander says. A reorganization or downsizing is stressful for employees, but managers make things worse if they fail to help employees understand what is actually driving the changes.

“Really good change management helps people understand why things happen, not just what is happening. They may not necessarily agree with what’s going on, but if they understand what’s behind it, they may be able to adapt better,” she says.

Lynda Miller, CEO of Overloaded Enterprises in Toronto, urges executives to create a “culture of hope and positivity.”

How to do that?

“Don’t ask for the impossible all the time. Give positive feedback. Recognize and reward people for outstanding work. Listen to what your employees say.”

Above all, workplace leaders should avoid being purveyors of doom and gloom. “There’s already enough negativity in the daily news, and people are inundated.”

Ms. Miller says she hears from employees: “We’ve got too much to do and not enough time to do it. We’re always working in crisis mode. Everything is urgent.”

She asks, “Can 100 things be urgent? That’s where we have to get common sense back. Be realistic about your capacity. You can’t put three days of work into one day.”

Steven Appelbaum, a management professor at Concordia University in Montreal, warns that too many employers allow technology to stress their staff. “They take the attitude, ‘We’ve hired this person with a certain set of skills, and we’ll get to him when we get to him.’ ”

But if the boss doesn’t use the new hire’s skill set right away, he or she will quickly become technologically obsolete. “The question is, what is management doing to keep these people trained with up-to-date skills?” Dr. Appelbaum asks. “Their answer is, it’s up to the employee to do that. Well, the employee may not know what’s expected of them.”

Role ambiguity and role conflict are two other key workplace stressors that demand attention, Dr. Appelbaum says. If what’s expected of an employee is unclear, they won’t know what to do. And if what’s expected conflicts with their own values, like ‘cutting corners,’ it becomes incredibly stressful.

“The more toxic the individual in a leadership position,” Dr. Appelbaum says, “the more probable that the employees’ stress level will go off the charts.”

To resolve role ambiguity, he says, organizations need an HR department with the authority to clearly define jobs, “so that I know where my job begins and where it ends.” If that’s not done, employees will battle one another for turf, causing extreme stress. “The HR department in many businesses is looked upon as a joke. It needs to be an integral piece of the culture and the strategy of the organization.”

To resolve role conflict, Dr. Appelbaum advises companies to create a vice-president of ethics. “The minute I have a quandary, I [can] deal with the ethics officer,” he says.

Article from The Globe and Mail

Guidance on managing stress in the workplace

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:35:00 +0000

Sadie Hopson Occupational Health01 April 2012 09:01This article first appeared in Occupational Health magazine. Subscribe online and save 20%.

Article from Personnel Today

A new set of standards aims to offer businesses a more simplified, yet significantly improved, approach to managing stress in the workplace. Sadie Hopson reports.

The taboo of mental health results in a lack of understanding of what stress is and how to tackle the problem. Stress is the body's natural response to a number of factors, but in the workplace the trigger is predominantly unremitting pressure. There is ambiguity about how to reduce the risk of stress as it is a subject open to interpretation.

Our situation, mood, environment and personality are all factors that affect how we react to a situation and manage the pressures placed on us. Stress is a subjective experience, where one individual's stress is another's oasis of calm. This makes stress difficult to regulate and assess for risks, and makes it problematic to ascertain accountability. New standards for professionals providing stress services should help employers get sound advice on how to manage stress at work.

The British Standards Institute (BSI), in association with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Nottingham University, the CBI, Canada Life and Aviva Insurance, European Union trade unions, Working for Wellbeing, and the International Stress Management Association (ISMA UK), have been developing three new standards that are focused on the management of workplace stress.

In response to demands for formal regulation, these standards set the benchmark for best practice in stress management within a structured framework. These Publicly Available Specifications (PAS) - PAS 1010, 1011 and 1012 - will sit alongside established standards developed by the BSI, such as ISO 14001 and PAS 220-223, and will pave a clear and quality-controlled route for the future.

As formally recognised standards in stress management, they meet the growing need for continuous improvement, risk mitigation and corporate stability, allowing businesses to meet legislative requirements, operate responsibly, promote sustainability and meet the expectations of their shareholders, not to mention improve the health of their workforce.

Learning curve

Working for Wellbeing is the body responsible for the administration, assessment and quality of the training programme for these standards, which is accredited by ISMA UK. To date, practitioners in stress management could have a range of different qualifications or accreditations. The HSE Management Standards have provided comprehensive guidance and advice on the best ways to manage stress, yet there has still been a level of uncertainty regarding the quality of delivery and a subsequent method for quality control. The new standards are an opportunity for specialists from a range of respective backgrounds to build on existing knowledge, including the HSE Management Standards and Management Competencies, and employ a certified and consistent approach to stress management.

The multi-disciplinary training presupposes that participants have individual skills and strengths, while the courses provide a framework for delivery and a support network for best practice, with ISMA-UK-accredited service providers.

Training covers the three PAS standards across their respective distinct areas. PAS 1010 (Organisational Stress) covers the obligations as documented by the HSE and the EU and the ways to implement the PAS 1010 guidelines and undertake a sufficient risk assessment. It is understood that the proposed PAS 1011 (HSE Management Standards and Management Competencies) will aim to cover both the HSE Management Standards and Management Competencies guidelines and reduce pressure in the workplace using this proven model.

The soon to be published PAS 1012 (Resilience, Wellbeing and Returning to Work) is primarily a code of conduct. Accredited practitioners following these guidelines are qualified to offer a professional service to any organisation interested in their particular field of expertise, while not restricting the various types of practitioner and discipline involved in stress management, building resilience and return-to-work programmes.

Practitioners aiming to be included on the exclusive Working for Wellbeing/ISMA UK register can combine any of these three courses as they choose. Practitioners who specialise in just one area, for example, risk assessment or one-to-one interventions, will be accredited and registered accordingly. However, any individual who undertakes all three training programmes will be registered as a "master stress practitioner". This register will be made available to anyone seeking an accredited individual who operates according to these standards.

Unified platform

There is no intention to reinvent the wheel or negate or undermine the work and research already undertaken on stress, but the crucial difference with this programme is that, finally, every service provider, employee and employer will be adopting the same uniform methodology. This increase in quality control and regulation will mean that relevant parties, such as insurance companies, will now be able to identify an audit trail for the steps taken to reduce stress and enforce accountability.

With an estimated £100 billion lost annually to workplace stress and the subject recently overtaking musculoskeletal problems as the top cause for long-term absence, it is likely that the demand for these licensed practitioners will be exceptionally high. Although the standards are being implemented in 2011/12, there has already been high demand among those seeking accreditation and from providers wanting to reap the commercial benefits of being one of the first to be accredited.

Joining the stress management register has not become a prerequisite of offering services in stress management, nor is it a compulsory certification for practice. However, until now there has been no way of assessing the value or efficacy of stress management procedures, undertaken by internal or external service providers, and, accordingly, it has been impossible to monitor or determine a degree of liability.

The new standards and training packages will provide employers with a trusted source of supply for stress management services and give the certified professionals the peace of mind that their service delivery meets the standards required. Further, such service suppliers will be protected by a national administration system that provides an auditable trail of the training and services. For the first time, managing stress in the workplace will become completely transparent.

Sadie Hopson is managing director of stress adviser Euthenia Touch. For more information about the standards and opportunities available to professionals in the field of stress management, contact Working for Wellbeing Ltd, the official ISMA UK training partner.

Article from Personnel Today

Benefits of taking Fido to work may not be far 'fetched'

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:43:00 +0000

posted on: march 30, 2012 - 9:30am

Article from Science Codex

RICHMOND, Va. (March 30, 2012) – Man's best friend may make a positive difference in the workplace by reducing stress and making the job more satisfying for other employees, according to a Virginia Commonwealth University study.

Stress is a major contributor to employee absenteeism, morale and burnout and results in significant loss of productivity and resources. But a preliminary study, published in the March issue of the International Journal of Workplace Health Management, found that dogs in the workplace may buffer the impact of stress during the workday for their owners and make the job more satisfying for those with whom they come into contact.

The VCU researchers compared employees who bring their dogs to work, employees who do not bring their dogs to work and employees without pets in the areas of stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and support.

"Although preliminary, this study provides the first quantitative study of the effects of employees' pet dogs in the workplace setting on employee stress, job satisfaction, support and commitment," said principal investigator Randolph T. Barker, Ph.D., professor of management in the VCU School of Business.

"Dogs in the workplace can make a positive difference," he said. "The differences in perceived stress between days the dog was present and absent were significant. The employees as a whole had higher job satisfaction than industry norms."

The study took place at Replacements, Ltd., a service-manufacturing-retail company located in Greensboro, N.C., which employs approximately 550 people. Approximately 20 to 30 dogs are on the company premises each day. The study took place over a period of one work week in the company setting, during which time participants completed surveys and collected saliva samples. Pagers were assigned to prompt employees to complete surveys during the day.

The researchers did not observe a difference between the three employee groups on stress hormone levels, which was measured via a saliva sample, in the morning, but during the course of the work day, self-reported stress declined for employees with their dogs present and increased for non-pet owners and dog owners who did not bring their dogs to work. The team noted that stress significantly rose during the day when owners left their dogs at home compared to days they brought them to work.

According to Barker, the team observed unique dog-related communication in the workplace that may contribute to employee performance and satisfaction. For example, he said, although not part of the study, that employees without a dog were observed requesting to take a co-worker's dog out on a break. These were brief, positive exchanges as the dogs were taken and returned and also resulted in an employee break involving exercise.

Barker said that other findings revealed mostly positive comments from employees such as "pets in the workplace can be a great bonus for employee morale …," "having dogs here is great stress relief" and "dogs are positive; dogs increase coworker cooperation."

"The effect of pets in reducing the impact of stress and enhancing communication found in other settings may extend to the workplace," said Barker.

"Pet presence may serve as a low-cost, wellness intervention readily available to many organizations and may enhance organizational satisfaction and perceptions of support. Of course, it is important to have policies in place to ensure only friendly, clean and well-behaved pets are present in the workplace," he said.

According to Barker, further research with larger sample sizes within the organizational setting is needed to replicate the findings of this initial study.

Randolph Barker collaborated with Janet S. Knisely, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry in the VCU School of Medicine; Sandra B. Barker, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry in the VCU School of Medicine; Rachel K. Cobb, Ph.D., research faculty in the VCU School of Nursing; and Christine M. Schubert, Ph.D., assistant professor of biostatistics at the Air Force Institute of Technology.

Source: Virginia Commonwealth University

Article from Science Codex

Taking Timeouts to Decrease Stress and Increase Creativity

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:08:00 +0000

Robert J. Kriegel, Ph.D.Author, Mental Coach

Article from Huffington Post

Posted: 03/27/2012 7:00 am

Written in collaboration with Neal Vahle, Ph.D.

The world today is moving faster than ever. Technology has changed the way we communicate and get information and entertainment, and also the way we read, learn and how, when, where and from whom we buy products. And these changes will keep coming faster and more dramatically, causing most of us to be rushing and racing just to keep up.

The result is an enormous amount of stress, tension and exhaustion, which severely decreases the quality of our health, our relationships and our work. When overstressed, we don't sleep well, are more anxious and irritable and are taking more than 40,000 tons of aspirin a year to counter the ever-increasing stress-related headaches, bad backs, neck pains and stomach problems.

Recovery

The human engine, like any other, runs on energy. The more you have at your disposal, the healthier you'll be and the better you'll feel and perform. But you can't continually run an engine in the red zone, at max output, or it will burn out.

All high-performance machines need a rest cycle. Physical trainers advise us that a recovery cycle is necessary to get maximum efficiency from a muscle. You can work one set of muscles hard one day but need to rest them the next. The same is true for your mental muscle. Without a rest your brain becomes fatigued and doesn't work as efficiently or effectively. When you're tired you don't think as clearly or creatively, and you can make more mistakes.

An essential part of any conditioning program, whether mental or physical, is a recovery cycle, which means programming in some down time. Down time is really a misnomer. Taking a mini break is actually an invaluable aid for increasing the quality of your "up time." Just a short break will help to decrease stress, increase energy and often provide new insights and perspectives.

Timeouts

To preserve your sanity, de-stress and improve the quality of whatever you are doing, you need to step back from the action. In my Peak Performance workshops I give participants three 15-minute "timeout" cards that must be used each day. Taking a short break to refuel and refresh doesn't mean that you are goofing off, that your brain has shut down. The ideas you've been thinking about, the problems you've been working on, shift to a "back burner," where they incubate, moving from the logical left brain to the creative right brain. And then, when you least expect it, lightning strikes!

When I taught at Stanford's Executive Management Program we found that people got their best ideas when they were driving, napping, exercising and taking a shower. Many leaders talked about taking timeout of each day for thinking. Some would leave the building and take a walk, others would exercise. Some talked about just having some quiet time. The CEO of Federated Stores' online division told me that when he drives to and from work he is completely out of touch, with his phone, beeper, pager turned off. "That's when I do my best thinking," he told me.

But the ethic today is never to be out of touch. We walk around with our phones strapped to our belts like gunslingers from the old west and feel just as naked without them. However, when you are never "out of touch" you are not "in touch" with your own ideas, hunches, creative insights and what Steve Jobs called the whispers in your mind. In other words, as you are racing to keep up, you're preventing yourself from developing any innovative new ideas about how to do things quicker and more efficiently.

Taking Down Time

"You can always find reasons to work. There will always be one more thing to do," said Carisa Bianchi, the former CEO of innovative ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day. "But when people don't take timeout, they stop being productive. They stop being happy and that affects the morale of everyone around them."

The benefits from taking timeouts are decreased stress and tension, deeper relaxation, and more energy. You'll also think more clearly after a short break.

Does that mean that you have to have a shower in your office? Or a cot to nap on? No. There are plenty of ways that you can take timeouts wherever you are and whatever you are doing.

• If you've been sitting for over an hour, get off your butt and take a brief stroll around the building -- or better yet outside and take some deep breaths.

•Several managers I talked to did reps with light hand weights between meetings.

• A single working mom takes several 10- to 15-minute power naps during the day to counter her stress and exhaustion. "Just a short nap really revives me, and I often wake to some new ideas," she told me.

• An ad agency art director does a 15-minute Tai-Chi practice every afternoon when he feels the blahs coming on.

• Many businesses have quiet rooms where you can meditate.

• I know an executive who takes out his putter and practices putting on the rug in his office. It may not lower his handicap he told me, "but it definitely lowers my stress level." It's also important to do something after work to de-stress, because the shift from work to home can be hard on families. (Wonder why the divorce rate is at an all-time high.)

• One manager reads a chapter of a spine-tingler during his evening commute home.

• A banking executive tinkers with her car after work: changes the spark plugs, checks the fluids, put air in the tires. "I don't know if I'm actually helping my car, but it sure helps my state of mind by focusing on the present rather than still thinking about the office."

• A great way to decrease your stress and improve your health is to use this in-between time to get some exercise: go for a bike ride, a swim or a run, do some yoga or meditation.

Remember, taking a timeout, whether it's a 5-minute break in the middle of the day or going for an end-of-the-day jog isn't down time. Just the opposite: These short breaks will reduce your stress and re-energize your up time, increasing your creativity, productivity and enthusiasm. And you'll sure be a nicer person to be around.

Article from Huffington Post

Managing schedule key to balancing work, family

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:28:00 +0000

By Mary Garrigan Journal staff | Posted: Sunday, March 25, 2012 6:00 am

Article from rapidcityjournal.com

Barry Sullivan admits that managing his busy daily schedule requires three things: a good calendar, a strong support system and less sleep than he’d like.

Sullivan, 32, is a helicopter pilot with the South Dakota Army Air National Guard with three young children at home and a wife who has been deployed to Kuwait since last May. SDNG Staff Sgt. Jennifer Sullivan is expected to return from duty in May.

The kids, Camden, 7, and 6-year-olds Dane and Vada, are a blended family who not only share a caretaking dad, but also his love of sports. Their after-school activities include jujitsu, wrestling, soccer, T-ball, coach-pitch baseball, swimming lessons and, for Vada, dance on Monday nights. Sullivan also coaches two Canyon Lake Little League ball teams this spring and is one of eight assistant baseball coaches for his dad, Jim Sullivan, at Rapid City Stevens High School.

As if all that wasn’t enough to keep Chief Warrant Officer 2 Sullivan busy, he is also a part-time reserve officer with the Sturgis Police Department and a National Guard member who spends one weekend each month and two weeks each summer on active duty.

Oh, and they have a dog, too.

Balancing all of that either makes Sullivan a textbook case of good time management principles or a perfect example of an overscheduled person with too many things on his plate, says Rapid City time management expert Diana Christopher.

Christopher teaches an annual time management seminar at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and says busy people like Sullivan often tend to be “super time managers” who already utilize the three most important tools of time management: goal setting, prioritizing and planning/scheduling.

“They are people who tend to value their time so much that they want more of it,” she said.

Since you can’t make more time, the only way to do that is to not waste any of it, Christopher said.

Sullivan has been a Guardsman for 12 years, the last four full time, and credits his military training with the structure and scheduling that allows him to stay on track each day. But so does the support system provided by his parents, Jim and Bev Sullivan, who help out with scheduling conflicts and child care, as well as the children’s other parents, with whom he and Jennifer share custody.

His job has a certain amount of scheduling flexibility, but since it involves supporting law enforcement missions throughout the state, he also spends some weeks based out of Sioux Falls.

“I would say having a plan and a solid support structure are the two things that keep me sane. It’s the only thing that even makes this feasible,” he said. “I’ve always been organized person, but this schedule requires me to take it to a higher level than I’ve ever needed to use before.”

Sullivan relies heavily on his Outlook calendar and its computer prompts to remind him of appointments, lessons and kid activities, but less organized people should recognize that successful time management has a lot in common with successful weight loss, says Christopher.

“Time management is very psychological,” she said.

Christopher suggests that gaining control of your time, just like getting control of the scale, requires a willingness to face personal weaknesses and make changes.

Procrastination, overuse of technology, including Internet surfing and too much television — or even mindless shopping — have to be addressed as the time wasters they are, Christopher said.

The average American watches 28 hours of television each week. “TV and the Internet are two of the biggest time wasters,” she said.

“We cut the cable. We don’t have cable television, because we don’t have time for it,” Sullivan said. The household rule is no video games during the week at all. Television time and computer use are largely reserved for weekends. Like most working parents, weekends for Sullivan are spent catching up on laundry, grocery shopping and other household tasks.

“We all kind of recover and catch up on the weekend,” Sullivan said.

During the work week, his days begin at 5 a.m. with a wake-up alarm. The kids get up at 5:30 a.m., get themselves ready for school and eat a breakfast of cereal before Sullivan drops them off at the YMCA’s before-school Sunrisers program, which buses them to Meadowbrook Elementary School.

“We try to get out of the house by 6:30,” he said.

He’s at work at the Army National Guard facility at Rapid City Regional Airport by 7 a.m. and, twice a week, picks the kids up from their after-school YMCA program in time for 4:15 p.m. jujitsu classes. By 5:30 p.m., they’re at home for a simple, but usually home-cooked meal, and homework time before heading over to McKeague Field for Stevens baseball practice. The kids throw balls around or explore for bugs while their dad, a former Post 22 player, helps out between 5:45 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. when his schedule allows. They are home by 8 p.m., finish homework, read a book and are in bed most nights by 8:30 p.m. or 9 p.m.

“The kids know what they’re supposed to do,” Sullivan said. “All kids want a system. Kids are good with structure. Without the chaos, I think they thrive.”

Christopher recommends that Americans consider setting priorities in their work and home lives, especially when it comes to children’s activities.

Setting daily, weekly or monthly priorities is easier if you first set goals that look five to 10 years into the future. Her own daughter recently did that by choosing to give up ballet and focus on tennis, instead.

Sullivan’s head doesn’t hit the pillow until nearly midnight each day, after a nightly phone call with Jennifer.

“That’s the only time now that I get to talk to my wife, so I get a phone call every night from her in Kuwait at 11 p.m.,” he said.

Less than six hours later, he gets up and does it all over again. He simply laughs when asked about getting eight hours of sleep nightly. His wife is the one who is making the true sacrifices, he says.

“I may have a busy schedule, but … she spends every night sleeping in a tent with 60 other females, thousands of miles away from her family. She is my hero, and she gives me the drive to get through every day,” Sullivan said.

Busy people must schedule sufficient time to do three things for their health: eating; sleeping and exercising, Christopher warns. “Without enough time scheduled to take care of themselves, they are going to face problems with weight management or stress management,” she said.

Because in the end, Christopher says, it’s important to keep in mind that the best time managers of all may be the “90-year-old who is healthy and happy. They are proof that they’ve spent their time wisely.”

Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8424 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com

Article from rapidcityjournal.com

Don’t Stress Over Stress

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 02:38:00 +0000

Wild Divine
March 23, 2012
10:32 am
Article from Care2

When you hear the word “stress” you can almost feel it – that sensation of being overwhelmed, of being unsure of what your next step should be, of frustration. But not all stress is bad. In fact, in the right doses it can help us achieve success. The key is to be able to identify our stress and manage it in a healthy way. (Are you stressed? See the stress symptoms checklist link at end of article.)

Stress is your natural reaction to threatening or demanding situations. It can propel us to action or render us helpless. It can even affect how we make our decisions. Often it leaves us feeling out of control. But that is just it, it is a feeling, not a fact. If we can regain control over our thoughts, we can channel our stress into a positive outcome.

First, we need to understand that as sophisticated as we have become, our animal instincts still drive us. When we are faced with a critical or difficult challenge, our fight-or-flight response kicks into gear. Our nervous systems pump stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, into our bloodstream. Our hearts pump faster, our muscles tense, our blood pressure rises and our breathing speeds up. Good stress will ready our body and mind to meet the challenge before us. Bad stress may overwhelm us, perhaps leaving us feeling dizzy or incapacitated.

And not only can stress help or hinder our emotional and physical ability to react, researchers have found that it also effects how we make decisions. According to Mara Mather of the University of Southern California, stress makes people focus on the way things could go right. “This is sort of not what people would think right off the bat,” Mather says. “Stress is usually associated with negative experiences, so you’d think maybe I’m going to be more focused on the negative outcomes.” What research has found, however, is that when people are put under stress they start paying more attention to positive information and discounting negative information. (Association for Psychological Science 2012, February 28)

As you can imagine, this shift in attention can work for or against you. It can increase risky behavior. You may leap forward without thinking through all of the ramifications. Or it may empower you to take the necessary risks to achieve something great.

Once we understand it is natural for us all to have an involuntary reaction to a stressful event, and that it can impact if and how we deal with the challenges set before us, we can be better prepared to recognize our stress and use it to our advantage.

As soon as we feel the signs of stress coming upon us, we need to stop and take a moment to breathe. Rather than letting ourselves go into auto pilot, we need to take control. The same mechanism that turns the stress response on can also turn it off – it’s called the relaxation response. This tells our mind and body that the danger has passed. Some have found meditation techniques can help them achieve this. What is wonderful about meditation is that even the attempt to enter a meditative state, whether you are a master or a novice, will have an immediate impact on your stress level – because you are stopping whatever else you were doing, you are resting, you are breathing deeply, you are slowing down. This will give you the space you need to calm your nerves, to collect your thoughts, and to see a clear path through the stress-inducing situation.

It is often said that the best defense is a good offense. By adopting an ongoing stress management program, including relaxation techniques that work for you, you will not only be able to give yourself instant relief from stress symptoms when they are triggered, you will also increase your overall sense of wellness and balance. And then when those stress triggers pop up, and you know they will, you will start to find that you are not reacting as quickly to them. You will still be prompted to action, but without the unhealthy panic and fear that clouds your judgment or shuts you down.

Have you made bad decisions or been immobilized by stress? What can you do to slow down and take control? Or how have you used feelings of stress to motivate you to do something you wanted or needed to do? Please share!

Article from Care2

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:32:00 +0000

Education guide: Managing school stress
Published: Sunday, March 18, 2012, 12:05 AM
By Kelly Huth | The Express-Times
Article from lehigh valley live

Express-Times Photo | BILL ADAMS

Megan Halkins, of the Weller Health Education Center, presents her program stress management to students at Pocono Mountain Intermediate School.

Will I get accepted into the school I want? Will I be able to get the grades I need? Can I afford it?

Those are just the some of the stresses running through the minds of college-age students.

Jessica McKinney, guidance counselor for Belvidere High School, says high school seniors go through pockets of stress throughout the year.

“I don’t know that we have kids complaining about stress, but you can see it in their face,” McKinney says. Her job is to offer tips and pointers for dealing with the pressure of deciding the next four years of their lives.

The kids are only in school a week, before McKinney says they start talking about colleges. From the beginning of October until about Christmas break, they have the stress of filling out applications.

“Then the kids see a slight decrease in stress once the applications have gone out — unfortunately that doesn’t last long,” she adds.

The pressures of “will I get in” fade to “will I afford it?” But it’s a stress for parents too, McKinney adds.

The key is preparing early. McKinney says they start advising sophomores to plan for the stressors of senior year and remind them to do a little at a time.

Express-Times Photo | BILL ADAMS

Megan Halkins of the Weller Center presents her stress management program to students at the Pocono Mountain Intermediate School.

Putting it into perspective

Seniors are by far the most frequent visitors to guidance, says Katherine Schuma, guidance counselor for Hackettstown High School.

And for the higher achieving students, the wait may be longer as the Ivy League and competitive schools wait until April to send out decisions.

“So if you haven’t heard from anybody yet you’re kind of getting a little nervous,” Schuma says.

Her advice for students, hard as it may be to hear, is that everyone ends up exactly where they need to be.

“You have to tell kids it’s going to be okay. They might not go to their first choice, but they will go to college,” Schuma says.

And if they don’t get into their dream school, it may be because the professor who is going to inspire and enlighten them to be an amazing human being who gives back to the world, is at the next school on their list.

It helps students to put the stress into perspective by realizing that college is a stepping stone.

“Tell them all to relax. It’s a stressful time, but in the realm of life, are you more concerned where you go to school or who you marry?”

Making stress a positive

Stress can be a good thing, says Joe Webster, Director of Education for the Weller Health Education Center. “It depends on how you deal with it,” he says.

The Weller Health Education Center prepares 43 programs, such as eating healthy, sexual education and stress management, to deliver to area school students in grades K through 12.

Stress lessons are usually delivered in the beginning of the year as students are dealing with transitions. They target students in middle school through ninth grade, Webster says.

They use Koosh balls in a juggling exercise to illustrate the point to students that if you try to take on everything on your own, you may drop everything.

For younger students, Webster says it’s important to emphasize healthy eating and getting exercise, talking about their issues and focusing on things within their control, as stress management techniques.

Aim for positive reinforcement — you can handle this.

For parents, if they notice their child is getting stressed — talk to them. “You don’t want to get to the point where they’re standoffish,” Webster says.

“If they don’t try to deal with it, it can lead to a lot of things,” Webster says, citing getting sick and missing school time as potential outcomes.

Younger students can manage stress by utilizing a planner to help them practice good time management.

It’s a balance between wanting to help and not pushing your child away by coming on too strong. Webster advises, seek professional help if the situation worsens.

“As much as we want to get rid of stress in our lives, it’s impossible,” McKinney says. “We have to deal with it.”

Article from lehigh valley live

Suspect's background a mix of patriotism and stress

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 23:53:00 +0000

By Donna Leinwand Leinart and Elizabeth Weise
Article from USA TODAY

BONNEY LAKE, Wash. – In his dress uniform, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales's chest would boast the ribbons and medals of a decade of exemplary service: Three good conduct medals, six Army Commendation medals, two Meritorious Unit commendations and a slew of combat and service ribbons.

In Bales' own words, his motives were pure. He told a military publication proudly that after the bloody battle of Najaf in 2007, he and his fellow soldiers helped the people who had tried to kill them earlier that day. "I think that's the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy," Bales told the Northwest Guardian.

And in the eyes of a loyal wife, the father of her two young children would still do his duty, even after he was passed over for a promotion last year. "It is very disappointing after all of the work Bob has done and all the sacrifices he had made for his love of his country, family and friends," Karilyn Bales wrote in a family blog called The Bales Family Adventures.

STORY: Combat stress could be part of suspect's defense

Bales, 38, the soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers, mostly women and children, now awaits his fate in a solitary cell in the military jail at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., Col. James Hutton said in a statement.

Bales allegedly sneaked off his small post in the Panjwai district in Afghanistan's unruly Kandahar province, a Taliban stronghold, around 3 a.m. last Sunday, walked to two villages where he entered homes and shot, stabbed and burned sleeping families, including nine children.

Although Bales and his family resented his expected fourth deployment, little in Bales' past suggests he harbored unharnessed anger or had become unhinged.

Senior military officials have suggested a combination of alcohol, combat stress and marital strife played a role in the massacre.

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

The home of Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who is accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians, is located in Bonney Lake, Wash.

But Bales' attorney John Henry Browne, who said he spoke briefly to the soldier, said the couple's marriage is solid. Browne told reporters at a press conference that Bales, the day before the shooting, had seen a fellow soldier lose a leg after stepping on a buried mine. Browne said he, civilian lawyer Emma Scanlan and military defense counsel Maj. Thomas Hurley will meet with Bales this week.

"Public reports that Sergeant Bales' supervisors, family and friends describe him as a level-headed, experienced soldier are consistent with information gathered by the defense team," Browne said in a statement. "It is too early to determine what factors may have played into this incident."

Bales' family is "stunned in the face of this tragedy, but they stand behind the man they know as a devoted husband, father and dedicated member of the armed services," the statement said.

Bales grew up in Ohio. He played offensive guard on the high school football team and was elected sophomore class president, yearbook photos show.

In Norwood, a suburban community near Cincinnati, friends and neighbors reacted with shock.

"That's not our Bobby Bales," said Michelle Cadell, who with her brother Micheal Blevins grew up across the street from Bales and knew him from childhood.

Bales' parents, Bernice and Garfield Bales, raised five sons in Norwood. Bales is the youngest, she said. Cadell recalled Bales' childhood fascination with mechanical things. He would watch intently as neighbors worked on their cars, she said.

Blevins said Bales, who considered studying physical therapy in college, helped a neighbor family take care of a young man who had multiple physical disabilities. "You don't understand what a family-oriented man this was," Cadell said. "And it was more than his family. He had an extended family."

As a teen, he once confronted a group of rowdy youngsters who'd gathered in front of Cadell's home and told them to leave. When one of the men physically challenged Bales, he decked the challenger and the group left, she said. Then Bales apologized to Cadell's mother for the unseemly scene.

Blevins, who admired Bales and followed him around "like as a little shadow" when he was young, called Bales a "hero of the neighborhood … a good influence."

Bales "overachieved on the football field," said John Stacy, a high school friend of Bales who now is Norwood Middle School's dean of students. "He wasn't the biggest of guys. He worked hard."

After high school, Bales played football at College of Mount St. Joseph in Delhi Township outside Cincinnati, but then transferred to Ohio State, where his friends said he majored in economics. Ohio State officials told the Columbus Dispatch that Bales attended the school from 1993 to 1996, but didn't graduate.

Military records indicate he completed two years of college. Bales also spent time in Jensen Beach, Fla., where he opened an investment business that he registered with the state.

Bales, then 27, enlisted in the Army on Nov. 8, 2001, just two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. He was assigned to the Third Stryker Brigade in the Second Infantry Division, Browne said.

The next year, police arrested Bales at a Tacoma motel for allegedly assaulting a girlfriend. He completed 20 hours of anger management counseling and the case was dismissed in 2003.

A separate hit-and-run charge was dismissed in Sumner, Wash.'s municipal court three years ago, according to records. It isn't clear from court documents what Bales hit; witnesses saw a man in a military-style uniform, with a shaved head and bleeding, running away.

When deputies found him in the woods, Bales told them he fell asleep at the wheel. He paid about $1,000 in fines and restitution and the case was dismissed in October 2009, two months after he deployed for a third time to Iraq.

After the Army stationed him at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash., he put down roots. He married in 2005.

Bales and his wife, Karilyn Primeau Bales, purchased a modest two-story house in Bonney Lake, Wash., in a working class neighborhood known as Lake Tapps. They had two pre-school aged children, a boy and a girl.

Bales deployed three times to Iraq. He served a year from Nov. 1, 2003, to Oct. 1, 2004, and returning again for 15 months beginning in June 19, 2006 to Sept. 22, 2007.

Bales, an infantry soldier, trained as a sniper and visual tracker in 2008 and completed a series of leadership courses, including the Warrior Leaders and Advance Leaders courses.

Neighbors said he spoke reluctantly and humbly about his wartime service.

"When I heard him talk, he said … 'Yeah, that's my job. That's what I do'," said Kassie Holland, a next-door neighbor. "I can't believe it was him."

During his 2007 deployment, a military history account indicates Bales participated in a critical battle in Najaf, Iraq, to rescue a downed Apache helicopter. "We discriminated between the bad guys and the combatants, and then afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us," Bales is quoted as saying in February 2009.

On April 1, 2008, he earned a promotion to staff sergeant. He deployed for a 10-month stint on Aug. 8, 2009, returning June 4, 2010, Army records show.

Browne said Bales suffered a minor head injury in 2010 as a passenger in a Humvee that flipped over. That accident may have caused a "traumatic brain injury" that could have contributed to Bales' distress at redeployment, he said. Browne also said Bales lost part of his foot in another incident.

An Army account of Bales' service record does not indicate he received a Purple Heart for any injuries.

After three deployments and two injuries, the military told Bales he would not return to the Middle East battlefields.

"The family was counting on him not being redeployed," and were "not happy" he was going back, Browne said.

He left for Afghanistan on Dec. 1.

Now the Bonney Lake house is dark, empty and up for sale. Two stacks of flattened, cardboard boxes and a child's sled filled the front porch and a bright flower wreath hung on the front door. Tools lay abandoned on the back deck. The remains of a child's birthday party are visible through the window.

The military moved the family to the base last week for their protection.

Ryan Hills, 34, his wife, Staci, and children share a back fence with the Bales, but had minimal contact. The couple seemed nice, they said.

"He was a super nice dude," Hills said. "We'd only really talked once, right after we moved in."

"They were quiet neighbors, no problems," he said.

Next door to the Hills family, a woman who declined to give her name said her family moved to the neighborhood three weeks ago and noticed that the Bales' home seemed to keep their lights on day and night. Then, on Thursday, the house went dark.

Hills said he's seen news reports that Afghans have threatened retaliation against Bales' family. He said he fears for the neighborhood.

"You never know," he said.

Contributing: Jim Michaels; Denise Amos Smith, Mark Hansel and Carrie Whitaker of the Cincinnati Enquirer, and Associated Press.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Article from USA TODAY

What public managers can do to support stressed staff

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:25:00 +0000

Work-related stress is an occupational hazard for many public sector workers. Ben Hicks of the Institute for Employment Studies explains what managers can do to help

Ben Hicks

Guardian Professional, Thursday 15 March 2012 07.45 GMT

Article from The Guardian

Work-related stress is a common cause of absence and sick leave. Photograph: Trinette Reed/Getty Images

Public sector workers take an average 9.1 days sick leave a year compared to 5.7 days in the private sector, research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) shows, and a leading cause of this absence is work-related stress.

While Health and Safety Executive (HSE) data suggests that illness due to stress at work has been declining, high levels remain in some areas of the public sector, especially in health, social work and education. Stress in these occupations can have a range of causes such as increased workload and increased pressure to meet targets, job insecurity, and organisational change/restructuring; however these jobs differ from those in many private sector organisations in that employees frequently undertake a more 'people-focused' role. This can result in additional stress through the emotional demands placed upon staff.

Studies indicate that emotional demands can lead to stress and burnout in those who routinely deal with others in distress, such as oncology staff, social workers, police officers, lawyers, counsellors, aid workers and researchers working with vulnerable people. Terms such as emotional labour and compassion fatigue have been used to explain how emotional demands impact on employees working within these professions.

Emotional labour can involve faking, hiding or managing emotions in order to meet environment expectations. Although this behaviour can be favourable in some situations (such as nurses disguising a low mood when with patients) it can lead to job-related stress, resulting in job dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Compassion fatigue can arise from dealing with traumatic work situations and the negative emotions of others. This can result in symptoms of distress similar to trauma, leading to an inability to work and a greater likelihood of mental health issues.

Emotionally demanding jobs can be psychologically damaging and it is important that support is offered to employees in order to ameliorate these negative impacts. Line managers are potentially well-positioned to offer this support if they are provided with adequate systems and behavioural guidance to enable this.

Research undertaken by IES highlights some considerations and behaviours that line managers should take onboard to effectively support their employees in emotionally demanding jobs.

Personal resilience is one factor that can alleviate the negative consequences of high levels of emotional demand. Although this can be inherent in some employees, much of this is learned through practice and experience within the job role. Younger, less experienced workers are unlikely to have developed high levels of resilience and line managers may need to provide staff with greater levels of support in the early stages of their career.

IES research on the mentor-mentee relationship highlights the benefits of having an experienced 'buddy' within the department (this may or may not be the person's line manager). This relationship can provide less experienced employees with the opportunity to 'offload' and share any emotional encounters with more experienced members of staff.

Peer support is also valuable for employees dealing with high levels of emotional demand. Line managers should aim to establish mechanisms and processes by which employees, both new and experienced, can regularly meet to discuss their emotional issues and provide support to one another. Once established line managers need to actively encourage the use of these processes. Peer support can also alleviate some of the emotional burdens and responsibilities placed upon line managers themselves.

IES research for the HSE has shown that in some organisations there is a widespread or embedded view that exhibiting signs of stress is a weakness. These attitudes will only exacerbate any emotional distress employees' face and will encourage them to 'bottle up' their issues rather than initiate open and honest conversations with their manager. Line managers should aim to counter this with an 'open-door' policy and other behaviours which show genuine concern, warmth and empathy for their employees. It is also necessary that senior management exemplify this approach to bring about a top-down cultural change within these organisations.

Line managers need to be able to spot the early signs of an employee suffering from the adverse effects of emotional demands and to act appropriately. If they feel unable to handle the situation themselves then the employee should be referred to other support, such as HR, occupational health or an employee assistance programme. Line managers who feel they do not have the specific skills or knowledge to recognise the early signs of emotional distress should seek more specialist training to ensure they can manage the situation effectively.

Finally all levels of management within organisations should consider the effect of emotional demands upon the line manager themselves. The CIPD employee outlook survey found 49% of middle managers are currently experiencing 'excessive pressure' at work. Therefore there is a risk that managers' own health and wellbeing could be compromised by dealing with the additional emotional difficulties of their employees. Public sector employers need to be wary of this and should ensure systems are in place to support managers so they in turn can support junior employees effectively.

Ben Hicks is a research officer for the Institute for Employment Studies, an independent, not-for-profit centre for research and evidence-based consultancy on employment, the labour market, and HR policy and practice.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Guardian Public Leaders Network free to receive regular emails on the issues at the top of the professional agenda.

Article from The Guardian

Live Like Royalty: The Many Health Benefits of Dogs, Man's Best Friend

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:09:00 +0000

MAR 12 2012, 10:06 AM ET

Article from The Atlantic

Dog owners worldwide enjoy longer lifespans on average, reduced blood pressure, improved cardiovascular fitness, and far less stress.

The young royals, Prince William and Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, created headlines late last month by revealing the name of their new puppy. Not mentioned in the multitude of stories is how the dog's presence can affect the health of the future King and Queen. The latest addition to the Royal family, Lupo, a four-month-old black cocker spaniel, is an ideal pet choice. Medical studies around the world have concluded dogs encourage better health, and adopting one statistically boosts the life expectancy of the monarchial pair. Not only is a dog man's best friend, but Lupo's presence could be better for you than an apple a day.

Dog owners worldwide enjoy longer lifespans on average, and the company a canine provides makes those extra years of life more gratifying. Positive health attributes dogs afford remain a constant for young and elderly alike, including weight maintenance, reduced blood pressure, and improved cardiovascular fitness. The benefits of owning a dog are not limited to the physical. People with pets enjoy superior self-esteem, while suffering less depression due to an optimistic mindset that companionship with animals engenders. The variety of sizes, temperaments, exercise needs, and breed peculiarities make dogs as versatile as a Swiss Army knife, and thus accessible to all.

Medical and academic institutions proffer statistics that support a notion of the dog owner as a more active and happier individual. A 2007 study by Queen's University Belfast compiled and analyzed global research data, confirming the science behind dog aficionados leading healthier lives. Published in the British Journal of Health Psychology, their analysis stressed regular walks were only part of the equation. Committee head Dr. Deborah Wells intimates social climate plays as important a role. "The ownership of a dog can also lead to increases in physical activity and facilitate the development of social contacts, which may enhance both physiological and psychological human health in a more indirect manner," she said.

Studies in Germany, Australia, and China point to dog ownership as sound public policy. An examination of Chinese women (men were excluded) reported increased exercise, fewer doctor visits, and diminished use of sick days at work when a dog is present in the home. Australian and German dog owners were found to use free governmental health services less than the general populace. Pet owners in those countries made approximately 12 to 15 percent fewer annual doctor visits than their pet-less peers. German pet owners spent 32 percent fewer nights in a hospital. The benefits appeared particularly strong for elderly people, the population group with the worst constitutions and heaviest use of health services. The economic benefit was substantial, approximating savings in health expenditures of $5.59 billion for Germany and $3.86 billion for Australia annually.

As with everything in life, age can be a relevant or limiting factor to owning a dog. However, the positives of dog ownership seem to outweigh negligible and manageable negatives. Surveys targeted at pet owners 60 years and older showed less stress and loneliness, better nutrition, and a stronger focus on the present. Seniors walking a dog enjoy a boost in parasympathetic nervous system activity, the region of the brain that supports calm and rest in the body. Activities in the care-taking role of a dog give older individuals a sense of responsibility and purpose that contributes to their overall well-being. An often cited but small-scale study of 92 elderly people hospitalized for coronary ailments, showed that within a year 11 of the 29 patients without pets passed away, compared to only three of the 52 who owned a pet.

Dog-given benefits are not limited to the physical; their stimulus on a person's mental contentment is equally discernible. Psychologists at Miami University and St. Louis University found the emotional benefits pet owners receive from animal companions could be the equal of a human friendship. They factored variables such as depression, loneliness, illness, self-esteem, and activity levels, finding that participants with pets scored far better overall, enjoying measurably higher self-esteem and less loneliness. The researchers hastened to point out that study subjects were not stereotypical dog or cat loners. "We repeatedly observed evidence that people who enjoyed greater benefits from their pets also were closer to other important people in their lives," they wrote, "and received more support from them, not less."

And the health advantages a dog offers are not restricted to ownership either. Canines are widely employed in therapeutic situations at hospitals, psychiatric venues, prisons, nursing homes, and schools to offer temporary stress management. Dogs are increasingly present in waiting rooms -- a practice that a study from the University of Pittsburgh confirmed reduced annoyance and irritation in medical patients. Their number showed a wandering pooch reduces pain (23 percent) and emotional distress (32 percent) among patients. This is a logical extension of other, more accepted, roles that therapy-dogs provide, such as the well-documented programs that introduce dogs into nursing homes and hospital wards, providing temporary comfort and distraction for patients suffering all form of maladies.

In the past couple of years, a lot of science has focused on the effect dogs have on children with autism. In Canada, Dr. Sonia Lupien co-authored one such study in conjunction with the Université de Montréal. "We found that among most autistic children, levels of stress hormones dropped significantly when a dog became part of the family," she wrote. "In those cases, parents reported dramatic improvements in their child's behavior." The study involved a relatively small sample size of 42 children, but the majority showed significant improvements. "Before having the dog, parents reported an average of 33 problematic behaviors, compared with only 22 when the dog was present," Lupien wrote. This has encouraged other institutions, including the University of Texas, to launch similar studies into the widening use of "Autism Dogs" (a recognized category of Service Dog) in that beleaguered community.

Another therapeutic arena where dogs are found is among traumatized military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The popular image is of a dog aiding a physically disabled veteran, retrieving dropped items, opening and closing doors, turning light switches on or off, carrying items, or alerting someone in case of an emergency. These dogs, by nature, lend their masters a friend and positive mindset too. Now, new breeds are trained specifically for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. They become skilled at spotting signs of stress, nervousness, or angst, responding by licking, cuddling, or demanding to be petted. The dogs refocus attention to themselves, coaxing veterans out of their consuming anxiety and making them aware of the temporary fixation. The heartening stories of these special dogs are legion.

I find myself to be anecdotal evidence. Every day at noon, Sultan, a black Labrador, fetches me (including weekends, refusing to acknowledge the concept of a day off) for a daily walk. At that point, I dutifully stop whatever I am doing to indulge in an invigorating break outdoors for my body and mind. The walk usually lasts 30 minutes, encompassing hills and the occasional rabbit or squirrel chase. The routine has become my reset button, and I return to my desk refreshed by a sense of serenity only afforded by nature.

Even if scientific proof were lacking, people intuitively understand the benefits dogs have on their human companions. As author and essayist Gene Hill insightfully quipped, "Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot little puppies."

Article from The Atlantic

INNOVATIVE HEALTH: Stress and brain health

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:48:00 +0000

Dawn Greenwald

Posted: 03/11/2012 01:00:00 AM MST

Article from Alamorgo Daily News

Do you suffer from brain fog or a notable decrease in the ability to focus with clarity during daily tasks? There are many factors that can cause these symptoms, but stress is a primary factor that can both cause and intensify them. Whether there is stress in the work place, personal or family relationships, from sickness, environmental toxins, poor diet, sleep, or when stress is prolonged for an extended length of time, it can cause a disruption of mental focus, cognition faculties and memory.

Stress initiates a series of chemical releases and reactions. A flood of hormones and neurotransmitters create both the stimulation of some cell and body functions and the inhibition of others. If this imbalance continues, and the body is caught in a long-term stress response, the cumulative effect can damage, and even kill, brain cells.

Research shows that sustained stress impacts learning and memory functions, particularly in the hippocampus, a two-part structure of the forebrain that helps to regulate memory and emotions. Studies indicate that the health and size of the hippocampus is associated with both short-term and long-term memory retrieval, as well as the ability to learn new skills. When the hippocampus is damaged, it's memory retrieval capacity falters and new memories may not be able to be formed. Some researchers believe that age-related memory loss may be due to long term exposure to stress-related hormones. In Alzheimer's disease, the hippocampus is one of the first areas in the brain that exhibits damage.

Stress also has been shown to compromise the blood brain barrier. This is a network of blood vessels that protects the brain from harmful substances and helps to maintain a constant environment in the brain. When the blood brain barrier is broken down by conditions such as stress, trauma, infection or radiation, then substances not meant to penetrate into the brain will break through the barrier and damage brain cells and minimally impede brain function.

Stress-induced chemical and hormonal changes in your body can also affect your mood. When you become depressed and irritable for long periods of time, mental energy and focus are depleted. If this condition is sustained, prescription mood-altering drugs may be taken, thus creating more imbalances in the body. One of the more important imbalances is the potential depletion of B vitamins, which can eventually contribute to brain fog. Vitamin B's are water soluble, meaning they only last for 24 hours in the body. It's important to take them to replenish the store on a regular basis.

If you are experiencing brain fog and have problems with clarity and focus, examine the stress in your life. If it has been chronic or long-term, you need to consider some stress management options, perhaps including lifestyle changes. If you have moderate stress, now is the time to start preventative stress management techniques. Mental health and stress management professionals can assist in this process. Also helpful are quantum biofeedback, yoga, exercise, supplements such as ginko biloba (also an anti-coagulant) or vitamin B complex, therapeutic-grade essential oils and meditation are some tools that are helpful in reducing stress and maintaining body balance. Eating a healthy diet and eliminating toxins in your daily life are essential. Be proactive with your brain health.

References: The Franklin Institute: www.fi.edu/learn/brain/stress.html; The Better Brain Book, by David Perlmutter, M.D., FACN, and Carol Colman Dawn Greenwald, Life Force Energies, is a quantum biofeedback specialist, professionally certified in stress and pain management through the Natural Health Certification Board. She may be contacted at 430-7522 or through the website www.quantumhealthsite.com . Innovative Health Network is now accepting requests to receive their monthly newsletter. Those who are interested should email innovativehealthnetwork@gmail.com.

Article from Alamorgo Daily News

The art of managing stress on the job

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 02:27:00 +0000

V Pradeep Kumar, Mar 7, 2012 :

Article from Deccan Herald

It’s all in the mind Having strong belief in the organisation helps one focus on his career.

Greek philosopher Plato once said, ‘Even God likes jokes’. Considering that Philosophers are close to God, this seems credible. Since mankind has survived several doomsdays and continues to globalise, God must have discovered a way to beat the stress of managing 7 billion heads. Indeed, God must be the best crisis manager ever, knowing the art of beating stress and managing crisis.

However, we are not as fortunate. High absenteeism and turnover, employees arriving late, spreading negativity and performance issues, characterise the reality in organisations. If this represents your organisation too, your employees must be highly stressed. Psychologists opine that workplace stress has risen to alarming levels, caused by various socio-economic factors.

In individuals, stress destroys the emotional wellbeing and tranquility, affecting the brain’s intellectual and psychological functioning. Employees become unproductive with disastrous consequences for organisations.

What causes stress?

Organisational and individual environments can cause stress. The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, reporting from a recent study of 10,000 workers, said that higher level of anxiety and depression was found in those who put in the most overtime. Individuals with pressures or challenges that exceed their ability to cope, experience stress. Thus, mismatch of job profiles and abilities, a job insecurity and poor working conditions cause high stress levels.

Other reasons

People in the wrong jobs: Pursuing a profession in harmony with education or passion is crucial to success. A creative person, confined to a desk job, jumbling with figures, routinely is unlikely to do justice to the job. Such mismatch of job profiles and skills of employees, leads to dissatisfaction and stress.

Productivity: Organisational planning requires a short-term and long-term perspective. Organisational plans should translate into individual employee objectives, action plans and KRAs. For instance, a Sales Manager must lead his team efficiently to generate business. In many competitive businesses, sales planning extends to the micro-level, estimating even daily productivity. However, poor planning by organisation or an employee leads to inefficiency and consequent stress.

Productivity is the outcome of efforts and excellence in execution. By experience, I find that the weaknesses are mostly in implementation of plans. Inconsistency in individual performance leads to employees being placed on an employee hit list or a ‘bench’. Fear of dismissals and job insecurity is a significant cause for worries and stress, as it affects financial, emotional and social wellbeing of employees.

Perceptions: Organisations strive to create an atmosphere of goodwill and harmony. However, egos, pride and weak communication skills of employees cause misunderstandings and conflict. In such an environment, organisational focus and energy is wasted to resolve inter-personal issues.

Appraisal process lacunas and lack of growth opportunities are common reasons for employee stress. Employees tend to feel unhappy because of perceived injustice and bias, in respect of appraisal decisions. In organisations with weak communication, appraisal decisions are not convincingly explained to employees, leading to wrong perceptions.

Irrespective of the reason, depression and stress at work are injurious to employees’ health and can engulf the entire organisation. Stress management hinges on a multi-pronged approach.

Key strategies

People-oriented leadership: As noticed by me across industries, involving employees at various levels to review organisational performance and budgeting is highly effective. In such organisations, employees readily accept goals, which become stimulating and achievable. With a participative budgetary process, employees get greater independence and responsibility. The appraisal process must be transparent and decision-making swift. Employees keenly await decisions, and delays lead to gossip and negativity, causing avoidable stress.

In a people oriented leadership, open house meetings and innovative platforms are critical to develop informal communication. Senior management should attend such meetings, and listen to employee suggestions, which can correct perceptions, foster connectivity and aid team-building.

Marketers have long been advocating the significance of the ‘people’ factor as the fifth ‘P’ in marketing mix, to deliver customer delight. The HR function has a key role in stress management by building human values around the employer brand, right from recruitment and training, to become a preferred employer.

The HR audit is a very useful management tool to assess the quality of human resources, including appraisal process, training and development programmes.

Build an environment to foster productivity: Through a mentoring process, help employees overcome personal crisis and challenges. With a positive association, employees become aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and are more receptive to training and development programmes. Equally important is to build a safe, hygienic and harmonious environment, where rules and regulations are implemented with a human face.

Work-Life balance: Even employees should identify personal factors causing stress. Intrinsic personality traits like impatience, aggression, rigidity, inferiority complex, etc, and family issues, financial problems, frequent career changes, lead to stress.

Managing your time is most crucial to be effective on the job, and to enjoy professional and personal life. There are reports that employees spend between 2-4 hours a day on activities unrelated to work such as emails, social media, internet surfing, telephone conversations, smoking breaks and gossip.

Plan your day with a ‘to do’ list, prioritising important and urgent tasks and eliminate activities which are only time-wasters. With more time for actual work, you can easily complete your assignments well in time. Thus, you can mix work with active family and social life allowing the mind to de-stress, thereby, improving the quality of life.

Further, having a strong belief in the organisation and yourself helps focus on building your career. Sudden job changes can also cause stress and hence, should be part of career progression. Ensure job stability to lead a satisfying professional life to fulfil personal and family aspirations.

However, we don’t live in an ideal world, with absolutely no-stress. If the workforce stress is beyond a limit, then employees could be unhealthy, poorly motivated and hence less productive. Organisations with such a workforce cannot be competitive.

Therefore, employee stress should be minimised and consequences of high-stress be recognised as a leading factor affecting organisational productivity. For instance, absenteeism and employee turnover affects an average of 20 per cent of productivity in most organisations. By controlling stress, organisations can not only reduce absenteeism and employee turnover, but may substantially increase productivity too. At an individual level, employees too should focus on self-improvement.

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management said, “Productivity is the responsibility of the manager and not the employee”. He also said, “So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work”. Organisations should realign their policies and cultures, to create healthy jobs matching profiles with abilities, provide counselling to employees when they are unable to cope, and ensure a strong support line through people-oriented leadership.

(The author is a management consultant.)

Article from Deccan Herald

Eldercare Stress: What's Different for Males—Especially Black Men

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 09:48:00 +0000

Article from New America Media

Caring.com/New America Media, News Feature, Paula Spencer Scott, Posted: Mar 04, 2012

Photo: Ohio Department of Aging.

Part 2 of a series. Read Part 1 here.

If you're a man who's caring for an ailing loved one -- wife, mother, father, grandparent -- consider yourself warned. You're vulnerable--especially, according to research, if you're African American-- to some different experiences from your female counterparts, just by virtue of being a guy. And these have the power to add to your stress level, or reduce it, research shows.

Women still outnumber men when it comes to family caregivers. But the number of men caring for an older adult has doubled in the past 15 years, from 19 percent of caregivers in 1996 to 40 percent by 2009, according to data from the Alzheimer's Association and the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC). More men than women provided long-distance care in that time period, too.

The face of caregiving is apt to increasingly be a bearded one, thanks to smaller family sizes (which makes the role fall more often to men), the tight economy (making men less able to outsource the role), and skyrocketing diagnoses of Alzheimer's disease (which affects women more than men, making many men spousal caregivers).

There's also a growing proportion of men ages 60 to 74 in the population -- prime caregiving years.

Individual exceptions abound, of course. But generally, the following Venus-and-Mars differences between the genders influence the nature of the stress to which caregivers are uniquely vulnerable.

WHAT CAN HURT MALE CAREGIVERS

Men tend to be less socially prepared for the role.

Nurturing -- the young or the old -- has traditionally been women's domain. Sheer inexperience can raise stress levels. Topping the list of stressors, studies show, is difficulty dealing with problem behaviors (like incontinence, medical devices (like respirators or catheters), and the basic activities of daily care (like bathing or feeding).

For any caregiver these are tall orders, but as a group, men are less likely to have any background in performing them. Older men also have less practice managing household tasks like cleaning and cooking, which often must be juggled on top of caregiving.

At the same time, men are traditionally conditioned -- especially by midlife and beyond -- to view themselves as experts. Unfortunately, caregiving forces them to check that mind-set at the door as they venture into a new world in which they tend to lack competence or even basic knowledge.

This means: Some caregivers have a steeper path right from the start. Slowly but surely, however, cultural shifts are making men more inclined to act as caregivers rather than farm out the role to sisters, wives or paid help. Just as the image of dads as hands-on caregivers has evolved in recent generations, the same is apt to be true for male caregivers. But for the oldest generations, who may not even have cooked and cleaned through their adult years, this can remain unfamiliar--and uncomfortable--territory.

Men tend to be less likely to ask for help.

Men tend to try to go it alone. Only 20 percent of the callers to the New York City Alzheimer's Association help line are men--half the potential users.

That may be representative of their underuse of other kinds of services intended to help caregivers. Men are also less likely to speak to co-workers about caregiving responsibilities than women, according to the 2003 Met Life Study of Sons at Work conducted by the NAC and Towson University, even though working caregivers split evenly between men and women.

This means: Men may miss out on resources that can ease the caregiver burden, or delay their use longer than necessary. They risk never even learning about employer-offered services, like caregiver assessments, flex time, and paid or unpaid leave. The message men need to hear: Getting help isn't a sign of weakness but a success strategy for improving the quality of care you can give.

Men tend to avoid talking about their feelings.

"Men tend to block their emotions," says I-Fen Lin, a sociologist at Bowling Green State University, who has researched gender and relationship differences among caregivers.

This means: Although this style has some benefits, it can also be isolating. Many men's idea of one of the circles of hell is to sit with a bunch of other people and talk about their problems, but support groups are one of the best ways to reduce caregiver stress, says geriatric psychiatrist and internist Ken Robbins of the University of Wisconsin.

Yet men attend support groups for caregivers in smaller numbers than women, missing out on an important opportunity for local-resource sharing and learning practical information about a disease such as Alzheimer's.

Men skimp on self-care.

Caregivers of both genders tend to put their loved ones' needs before their own, but men are, as a rule, notoriously worse about self-care. They tend to have more vascular risk factors than women, even before entering the stress of caregiving. A 2010 University of South Florida study in the journal Stroke found that caregiving spouses who are under high stress were at a higher risk of stroke -- men more so than women, and African-American men most of all.

This means: Caregivers risk compromising the level of care they can provide, or having to move a loved one from home care, if they become sick themselves.

Many available caregiver resources directly or indirectly target women.

Imagery and language suggesting most caregivers are women can be a turn-off to male caregivers. They reinforce an outdated image that male caregivers are anomalies or outsiders -- and therefore men avoid tapping into sources of help.

This means: Community resources have to work harder to reach out to male caregivers. When the Virginia Department on Aging developed male-caregiver outreach programs with three area agencies on aging, they realized that a major hurdle was getting men to accept support.

Among the most effective methods of awareness and education that they found were to offer male caregiver workshops, cooking classes (presumably male spousal caregivers needed to learn this skill), and newsletters and flyers that were specifically targeted to men.

What helps male caregivers

American culture still sees male caregiving as a novelty.

The flip side of outdated packaging for brochures and speaker series about caregiving support is that it reveals that male caregivers are still, in fact, a minority -- which oddly, may work in their psychological favor.

"Male caregivers usually have more positive feelings about the caregiving experience than women," says sociologist Lin. "Not because they enjoy it more -- but because in the U.S., we assume women will take care of the elderly. So if they do, they're taken for granted. We don't have high expectations of male caregivers, on the other hand, so friends and relatives give them more praise and positive feedback for what they do."

This means: The applause men may get compensates for a lot of the stress they're experiencing, Lin says, which can reduce their overall perception of stress.

Men tend to view caregiving as a problem to be solved.

One of the key gender differences in caregiving is in approach. Men tend to be problem solvers, Lin says. "They focus on tasks, whereas women focus on relationships."

This means: Setting feelings aside to work on discrete problems -- how to keep someone with dementia busy, how to make bathing safer and more comfortable -- helps a caregiver avoid getting bogged down by thoughts of loss, fear, and frustration. This is a huge reason that men are more likely to view caregiving positively than women, Lin says.

Men tend to respond more positively to support groups that are billed as being "educational" rather than just "supportive," found occupational therapist Nira Rittenberg, who designed a support group for Alzheimer's families with the University of Toronto. They like grabbing onto the idea of learning management tactics, rather than wasting time talking about how problems make them feel.

Men tend to hire help more often than doing hands-on care.

Women put in more hours at caregiving and do more hands-on care, according to the NAC. Helping with the activities of daily living -- getting in and out of bed, bathing, toileting -- is extremely stressful work. Male adult children usually contribute in other ways, such as driving, doing home maintenance and managing doctor visits and finances.

That's not to say men don't provide firsthand care -- only that, as a gender, they do less of it. Husbands, however, do about the same amount of hands-on care as caregiving wives.

This means: Doing less hands-on care seems to be physically and emotionally protective. In the University of South Florida stroke study, African-American men were the most vulnerable group of all.

"What we think is happening here is that this subgroup of highly strained African American men probably lack supports from family and other services," says lead researcher William E. Hailey. Being less able to hire out help for demanding care tasks than their white counterparts, and less likely to have breaks, their vascular health suffers more.

Men tend to see caregiving as a "job" and a "duty."

For many men, caregiving is a series of discrete tasks to get through, an extension of their role as son or husband. Male spouses, especially, tend to view caregiving as a natural expectation of marriage, a chance to "give back after she took care of me all those years."

This means: Compartmentalizing caregiving as a responsibility, rather than seeing it as something that's taking over your life, automatically downsizes it to a more manageable scope and helps men view it with a more positive mind-set. This mind-set can be protective against stress, Lin says, especially for caregiving husbands.

Paula Spencer Scott, a senior editor at Caring.com, wrote this article as part of a MetLife Foundation Journalists in Aging Fellowship, a project of New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America.

Article from New America Media