There has been a lot of research that suggests that the immune system can be severely affected by stress. Kiecolt-Glaser did an experiment to evaluate the effect of acute stressors on the immune system. She had a group of students who were about to have their medical exams. She took the blood sample one month before the exams and another during the exam period. She measured the NK cell activity to see how the immune system was effected and found that the NK cell activity had dropped significantly in the second blood sample that had been taken shows that stress had caused to lower the efficiency of the immune system and made the students were vulnerable to stress-related illnesses.
The results were that the chance of developing a cold correlated with stress index scores. The life event lowered the immune function and increased vulnerability to the virus. However there were several problems with this research, one of which was that it was an indirect study- there was no direct measure of the immune system for example no blood test or medical test was taken as evidence. Consequently we cannot determine how far the participant’s immune system was affected in relation to the stress. Another key problem was that there were was no direct manipulation of the independent variable so the study doesn’t tell us which element of the stress index is most important and related to the decrease in immune function.
I do not believe the article by Wright is as credible. Wrights article lacked statistical research only citing studies to prove his viewpoint. His use of one case study to prove environmental causes and mediation of symptoms to me was not sufficient. Based on the statements presented in this critical issue, which author do you agree with? Why?
Participants were also asked to complete a questionnaire to see if they were experiencing any other type of stress. Kiecolt-Glaser found that NK cell activity was reduced in the second blood sample compared to the one taken one month before the exams, an implication of this finding is that short term stressors reduce immune system functioning, increasing vulnerability to illness. It was also found that students who reported the highest levels of loneliness had the lowest NK cell activity. Kiecolt-Glaser’s study on examination stress was supported by Marucha (1998) who looked at the rate in which wounds healed. Marucha inflicted a ‘punch biopsy’ in the mouth of students either during the summer holidays
They found that there was a high inter-rater reliability which showed that the diagnosis of phobia is reliable. However they only looked at social phobias and didn’t consider any specific phobias therefore it cannot be generalised meaning that it is low in external validity. Also they only used interviews which means there are issues with self-report data. Social desirability bias could also occur as the participants may act in a certain way to make themselves look better even though it’s not necessarily their true behaviour. The other way of examining reliability is through test re-test, which is
Outline and evaluate research studies into life changes and/or daily hassles Rahe et al’s (1970) This study was done to see whether illness could be caused by life changes. They gave 2500 male American soldiers the SRRS to see how many life events the soldiers had experienced in the last 6 months, they then recorded each soldiers SRRS score. During the following 6 months the soldiers’ health reports were monitored, after the 6 months the number of LCU was correlated with the sailors’ illness scores. They found a positive correlation of +0.118 between LCU scores and illness scores; this showed that there is a link between life changes and illness. They concluded that an LCU score of 150 in the past 6 months increased illness risk by 30% and if the LCU score is 300 there is a 50% increased chance of illness.
He tested whether the stress of important medical examination has an effect on the functioning of the immune system. His experiment was natural and he used 75 medical students. Blood samples were taken a month before the final exams which was the low stress condition and again during the exam period representing the high stress condition. Immune functioning was tested by the T cell activity in the blood samples. Students were also asked to fill out questionnaires to assess their psychological variables such as life events and
Our aim is to make people more aware that Anorexia is a mental health issue and cannot be cured by just a change in diet. Do you think that Anorexia cases are more or less common in developing countries? (Correct Answer; Less Common) In this graph we can see that the participants were undecided on the correct answer. This shows us that people are unaware of the implications of the pressures of living in a developed
For instance, a philosopher named Albert Campus states , “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Furthermore, some commentator’s voice that physician assisted suicide is requested because of poor care, is simply wrong, only leads to a downhill path, and goes against the purpose of medical treatment. On the other hand, others argue that assisted suicide protects people from pain and is an unselfish act. However, according to the Hippocratic Oath medical professionals agree that they will not give patients lethal
From his correlations, he claimed to identify causal relationships between two factors: integration; the extent to which your linked to people, and regulation; the extent of rules and regulations a society has. He argued that too much and too little of these factors would make people vulnerable to suicide. For example, if someone had too much regulation, then committing suicide may be their response to over powering rules being put upon them. However, in identifying these causal relationships, Durkheim ignored the fact that suicide rates are socially constructed, therefore he wasn’t working with the true picture when identifying his relationships. Also, he correlated his evidence, meaning that the correlations he established may not demonstrate cause and effect.