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ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION DISASTER MENTAL HEALTH NEWSLETTER

Learning From The Past and Planning For The Future

MENTAL HEALTH MOMENT March 30, 2001

To escape criticism - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." - Elbert Hubbard *********************************************************************************************************** PSU TO HOST CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH CONFERENCE The 15th Annual Children's Interagency Conference will be held April 24-27 at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel. More than 80 workshops and general sessions will focus on best practices and the future for children's mental health services in Pennsylvania. The conference is intended for professionals in state, county and regional child and adolescent programs in justice, welfare and education, psychologists, social workers, and family members. It is sponsored by the Pennsylvania Child and Adolescent Service System Program Training and Technical Assistance Institute, which is part of the Center for Community Action and Research in the School of Behavioral Sciences and Education at Penn State Harrisburg. For more information, go to http://pacassp.hbg.psu.edu. ------------------------------------- DANGEROUS GAMES Some kids seem to whine at the least little ache or pain, but when it comes to the playing field, pay close attention. Last year, over one million kids under age 18 were seen in emergency rooms for sport-related injuries. Children's joints and bones are different from ours, and what may seem like simple shin splints may be a serious stress fracture. Our advice: if your child routinely says that he's not feeling well, then find out why. See a doctor if you notice persistent complaints (say, if his lower back is aching three days straight), any swelling, or limping. And go head to head with any coach who wants your child to participate in risky practices such as: head-first "spear" tackling in football; heading the ball in soccer under the age of six; pitching more than three innings in baseball under the age of 10, or more than six innings under the age of 14; and body-checking in hockey under the age of 12. Small Talk is a weekly column of safety and health information for parents and other caregivers for children. It is a community service of the Penn State Children's Hospital, located at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pa. Please direct any comments or questions to Patricia Millner, director of nursing at the Penn State Children's Hospital, at mailto:pmillner@psu.edu. ***********************************************************************************************************

STRESS MANAGEMENT: What To Do About It

Everyone experiences stress - some at home and in the family; some at work; some individual. Personality differences, organizational or family hassles, job requirements - these all contribute to stress. Stress is one of the most harmful and dangerous threats to good health, well- being and peace of mind. It is one of the most common ailments besetting the human race. Of all the creatures on earth, only humans elect to ignore the need to protect themselves from such danger. We cannot avoid all forms of stress no matter how hard we try. However, the body's built-in warning system can always be relied upon to signal the onset of stress. It gives us warnings about safety. We know the warning signs, the signals that tell us that stress is on the way and that we should prepare to resist it - or at least to blunt its impact. However, unlike other creatures, humans ignore their body's early warning system. As a result, stress takes its toll. It can ruin a person's health, destroy peace of mind - even shorten life. We cannot always run away from a stress-inducing situation. But, knowing that stress is coming, and that it may linger long after the danger itself has passed, gives us an advantage. Stress impacts our personal effectiveness and well-being, our work performance, health care costs and employee litigation. The effectiveness of work performance is related to the level of stress experienced by a person. As stress increases, performance tends to become more effective. However, there are diminishing returns. When a certain point is reached, performance effectiveness begins to decline; judgment becomes impaired; quality of thought is reduced; and the excitement and challenge of work is lost. In other words, work becomes DISTRESSFUL. DISTRESS is negative stress. It can reduce performance effectiveness. Eventually, it can result in physical and emotional symptoms of stress. Three of the most prescribed drugs in the United States today are Valium, Inderal and Tagamet. These drugs are used to treat anxiety, hypertension and ulcers. These conditions can be exacerbated by individual life style choices such as smoking, excessive drinking, poor diet and elevated stress levels. What this means to business and industry is increased health care related expenses in the hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars a year nationally. This cost is borne primarily by private enterprise. Premature deaths, absenteeism and illness cost over $50 billion dollars a year in salaries alone. Society in the United States in recent years has seen a large increase in litigation resulting from stress-related court cases. Industry leaders have been stunned by legal judgments which have attributed liability for stress-related illnesses directly to corporate management. This has increased the costs of health care burdens on U.S. corporations even higher. What can be done about stress? How can we come to grips with our stress and overcome it - permanently? Our most valuable weapon against the self- destructiveness rooted in stress is EMOTIONAL COMMON SENSE. If we understand our needs, drives, values and life style, we can develop ways of relating to situations - and to people - which prevent stressful situations or make it possible to eliminate them before any harm is done. TENSION is a common signal of stress. We are about to explode, but we don't. We let it boil inside us. It begins to take its toll. Tension which is frequently experienced can interfere with concentration and eventually results in a variety of ailments. Hypertension, cardiac problems, ulcers, insomnia and headaches are all symptoms of too much stress and the inability to escape from it. The emotional anxieties which cripple many people (of all ages) go hand in hand with excessive stress. Over the long term, anxiety is one of the most disabling of all emotional discomforts. Rage, anger, or going beyond your "boiling point" and "blowing your top" are built into the nervous system. In children, anger is one typical response to parental authority. In adults, it is generally experienced after feelings of emotional hurt or humiliation. How to express anger "properly" is a common emotional problem. Many people strike out in an exagerrated way. Others are trained to ignore their feelings. Still others focus their anger at targets that are totally inappropriate. How do we deal with stress in these contexts? The first step is to break the pattern of tension. To do this, we must determine the methods best suited to our needs. For example, relaxation can close the door on hypertension and stop it before it starts. We may not be able to control all our ailments, but in proper application, we can learn to cope with stress, and achieve deep relaxation. Another means of dealing with stress is behavior modification. The idea is that we can be taught to eliminate bad habits or fears by developing "normal" responses. This retraining treats symptoms - for example, fear of flying, stuttering, undue stress reactions, etc. All of these practices, whether pursued individually or in groups, require a conscious effort to relax. Generally, it takes a minimum of two weeks before results are experienced. For many people, it takes several months before they find themselves able to change some of their behavior. Total relaxation, total clearing of the mind, can be practiced anywhere - on a train, a plane, even at a boring movie or sports event. Some maintain that professional training is an absolute necessity for one seriously interested in any relaxation method. However, others contend that all that's needed is a pinch of self-discipline to enable you to do it on your own. Some insist that ten minutes practice twice a day - every day - is just as effective as twenty twice a day. Others feel that thirty minutes once a day will serve the purpose. The approach you take must be one you feel comfortable with - and follow consistently. To begin in an easy manner, you might try counting backwards from ten to one. Exhale slowly each time you say a number. Physical exercise is a vitally important adjunct to relaxation, as is a proper diet. Anything from a rigid yoga routine to setting up exercises can provide ample release from tension and stress. Whatever exercise chosen, it is critically important to practice it consistently. Some experts claim that jogging or something similar is all that is needed to break tension. They claim that jogging can improve the response to stress and help overcome depression. It also lowers the heart rate and blood pressure, improves the heart muscle and is beneficial to the circulatory system. Whatever exercise is chosen, one way to tell if it is vigorous enough to be doing any good is to take a pulse immediately after finishing. Consult your family doctor and establish what a healthy difference should be between your normal pulse rate and the rate immediately after exercising. MANAGING STRESS AND CHANGE Stress in any organization can result from many different things or from one really big thing. Change is often one of the major causes of stress in an organization. This may be due to reorganization, changes in personnel, changes in goals, difficulties in management, or a variety of other problems. At one time or another, we all experience feelings of being overly involved in trying to achieve certain goals. We try hard to accomplish something important and may have some difficulty getting our goals across to others. This often results in out attempting to accomplish it all by ourselves. Rather than delegating tasks to others (which may or may not result in task completion), we try to do it ourselves. This means that we tend to become more intense un our personal commitment and spend both more time and personal involvement than may be necessary. From a management standpoint, this can alienate those who could provide needed expertise to an organization. When organizations undergo significant changes, there are certain stressors that are associated with these changes. Some of these include: 1. SENSE OF TIME URGENCY - Time urgency is a feeling of insistent demand for your time and efforts. When this exists, you are likely to feel compelled to do more and more, to produce, and to keep filling your available hours as rapidly as possible with new tasks. 2. SEEKING DEADLINES AND PRESSURE - Here you are pushed to set unnecessary and often unrealistic deadlines. Preference is shown for activities which will tend to generate the maximum pressure for you to perform. 3. SETTING POORLY DEFINED GOALS - This is characteristic of people who frequently act by throwing themselves into any available activity as soon, and as completely, as possible without evaluating the outcome or the use to be made of the goal when it is finally achieved. 4. AGGRESSION AND HOSTILITY - This occurs when your behavior becomes so intense that any person or thing which gets in the way of the goal path is met with aggression and anger, simply because it is not part of the current commitment. 5. "POLYPHASIC" THINKING - This is a $100 word that merely means that you tend to think (or worry) about many items at the same time and often concentrate on the incomplete tasks ahead of you rather than the tasks you are presently engaged in. One or more of the above characteristics may cause you stress and/or cause you to be an ineffective manager. Consider the following statements: "I have very little time for hobbies which are 'nonproductive' in nature." "When I'm working, I always try to work on several jobs at the same time." "I feel that most people don't get enough done simply because they don't work hard or long enough at it." "If I run into a problem on a job, I generally move ahead as best I can without asking for help or guidance." "It never seems like I have enough time to finish all the things I have started." "When watching TV or reading, I feel nervous and guilty if I'm relaxing and not working on something productive." "I often rush into a job without getting all the details about what is expected of me." "I frequently need to wake up earlier or go to bed later in order to complete all the jobs I have to do." "If a job is taking too long because of unexpected delays, I get upset and angry." "It is my general feeling that I have taken on too many things to do and will be lucky if I can finish them all." If one or more of these statements is true for you, you may want to consider methods of reducing the stress such behaviors cause. You may need to change how how you react in common situations. Let's consider three initial techniques you can use to do this: 1. SLOW DOWN AND REST - Break up the working day by setting aside specific periods for a short rest and review of activities. Decide ahead of time WHEN, WHERE and WHAT for each pause you intend to take. This involves a commitment on your part. STICK TO IT! 2. GOAL ANALYSIS - This is the process of deciding whether specific things that you are working on are really worth the effort, or are really important as part of your life. Ask yourself: "Is the objective in this case of small importance either to me personally or to my life?"; "Is it possible to set aside this task for some period in order to concentrate on more important activities?" SET PRIORITIES! 3. ACTIVITY CONCENTRATION - Require yourself to select work activities in terms of their life significance and concentrate your efforts only on those items which are of real importance to you. The key is to try to arrange the tasks remaining after your GOAL ANALYSIS into a ladder of importance. Then concentrate your efforts on the tasks near the top instead of attempting to act on all tasks at once. DO NO "SPREAD YOURSELF TOO THIN." If you decide that you want to change some of your approaches to stress, the next step to consider is setting some personal goals. The following are suggestions for making changes in the way you react to people, situations, and events. Remember, these can work in other areas as well. Focus mainly on living up to your own expectations. When you are tempted to push yourself harder because of a lack of confidence in your own or someone else's ability, step back and objectively appraise the job done so far. Make sure that you have not lost sight of the original goals and are not just caught up in the process of doing better. The next time you find yourself spending lots of energy trying to get things done to "PERFECTION", remember what you have read about ACTIVITY CONCENTRATION. Try to be a little more flexible in your assessment of the relative importance of various objectives. Try to decrease the inappropriate feelings of obligation and responsibility you may have when you approach an objective. It will help temper your driving approach to job activities if you will try to be more easygoing and less detached from the people surrounding you. Accomplishment of goals depends on the performance, interaction and cooperation of all involved. No organization is a one person operation. It involves everyone. Sometimes this causes stress. Reducing that stress and accomplishing the goals may require some changes in behavior. This can benefit both you and your organization. ***************************************************************************************************** For further information on this topic, use the link below to go to a search engine and find books on this topic that you can order online. Begin by trying the following descriptors: Stress, stress management, stress and work, stress and the family, stress and concentration, stress and goals, stress and time, stress and change, stress and relaxation, stress and rest, stress and deadlines, stress and pressure, etc. https://www.angelfire.com/biz/odochartaigh/searchbooks.html ***************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************** Contact your local Mental Health Center or check the yellow pages for counselors, psychologists, therapists, and other Mental health Professionals in your area for further information. **************************************************************************************************** George W. Doherty O'Dochartaigh Associates Box 786 Laramie, WY 82073-0786 MENTAL HEALTH MOMENT Online: https://www.angelfire.com/biz3/news