How can stress affect someones mind?

Answer 1

it really doesn't, it's the mind that creates the stress through our thoughts which translate into emotions and then manifest through our physiological response, such as raised shoulders or headaches.

Answer 2

Stress can affect alot of things. Your mind body and soul. Stress is something that can be taken care of....its just humans sometimes get SO CAUGHT up in their everyday lives that they dont take the time to stop and look at a cloud pass by or admire a pretty flower with morning dew. Stress is an obstacle blocking happiness and peace.

Answer 3

Stress Changes Your Brain
06.24.03
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We all know that stress is bad for us. But as this ScienCentral News video reports, neuroscientists now say chronic stress can actually change parts of our brains.

Stress Really is Bad

We all have a little stress in our lives. But after studying nerve cells in a banana-shaped area of the brain called the hippocampus, a hub for learning and memory, neuroscientists say chronic stress can have devastating effects on our brains.

Bruce McEwen, professor and head of the neuroendocrinology laboratory at the Rockefeller University, explains more about the hippocampus: "It's a structure that is very important for remembering where you were and what you were doing when something important happened; in other words, providing context. For example, remembering where we were and what we were doing on September 11, 2001— that's a function of the hippocampus. The reason that we remember that horrible day is that another brain structure very close to the hippocampus, called the amygdala, is a structure that reacts strongly to emotionally-charged events, either very positive or very negative events."

McEwen and his team, who published their research in the February, 2003 issue of Nature Neuroscience, looked at the brain cells of both stressed and not-so-stressed mice, and found something interesting about the brains of stressed-out mice. "[Nerve cells] have these wonderful trees [with branches] that are called dendrites, places where other nerve cells make connections and transmit chemical signals," says McEwen. These cells connect to each other at junctions called synapses. "When we look at these individual nerve cells from an animal that's stressed or not stressed, we could see some very characteristic changes. For example, the branches become shorter and less branched, as a result of repeated stress. That means there are fewer synaptic connections, and it means these cells are not receiving as much information as they normally do. When you look at many of these cells you realize that many of the cells in this brain area called the hippocampus show this shrinkage after repeated stress."


The hippocampus (in yellow).

McEwen's team found the opposite was happening in the part of the brain that regulates fear and emotion, the amygdala . "With a chronic stress, neurons in the amygdala grow, they become larger," says McEwen. "And there's evidence that in depressive illness the amygdala may even become larger, and it certainly becomes more active."

So, after exposure to chronic stress, if the cells in your hippocampus are shrinking, and the cells in your amygdala are growing, "you may have all sorts of anxieties and anger and fear, and yet you don't have the hippocampus to help you connect it to where you were and what you were doing to make it specific. So you may have generalized anxieties as a result of this."

This can also be looked at in the human brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). "The living brain can be imaged while the person is awake and conscious," says McEwen, "and you can actually measure the volume of the hippocampus in disorders like major depressive illness. If [a depressive illness] goes on for a long enough time, the hippocampus becomes smaller. We think it becomes smaller because the nerve cells are shrinking the way we originally saw it under the microscope."

McEwen says that we could try to cope with stress by "going out and relaxing and enjoying a hobby, enjoying friends, exercising, going on a vacation, doing good stuff that will actually push our bodies in the right direction."

Researchers advise that if you're up against a situation that you cannot control, don't keep it inside. Talk about it with friends and family or see a health professional. Funding for the research came from the National Institutes of Health.


top email to a friend by Karen Lurie

Answer 4

Stress can affect how we act, how we feel, how we react; we can be one place an our minds can be at another daydreaming at a wonderful place or at a terrible place; or we can have the fight or flight reaction; we all handle it different. Sometime we can put it a side and continue and sometimes it can stop us dead in our tracks. Death of a love one, road rage, loss of income, loss of a relationship.

Answer 5

Stress can interfere with your judgement. Also it makes your body "malfuntion" from chemical imbalances it causes and can take years off your life from the "stress" it puts on your body. It can make you paraniod and irrational, seeing conspiricies everywhere, people out to get you, and so on. Stress can affect your mind badly.

Answer 6

With only minimal stress the person will get angrier with others lose their Patience quicker, however with an overwhelming amount of stress, there could be severe psychological malfunction, resulting in possible mps, severe depression, or bodily damage.

Answer 7

Stress can cause a person to have serious health problems, because stress can cause a huge strain on the heart, which is vital to human body.

Answer 8

well, it depends on the type, ammount, duration, and psychological strength of the individual.....these affects include,but are not limited to loss of apetite,agitation/irritability,fear,anger,saddness/hopelessness,becoming withdrawn,severe depression,and in a worse case scenirio it can become so bad that it causes delusions,hallucinations,and a complete withdraw from reality....a good example is service members who have seen and experienced a multitude of horrifing events causing the maximum of how stress can affect an individual...

Answer 9

Stress, physical or mental, taxes the entire body. It increases blood pressure, heart rate, breathing,etc. Continued stress can lead to exhaustion, loss of sleep,depression, anxiety and other ailments. Over time, if not treated, these conditions can and do lead to mental fatigue and eventually mental breakdown.

Answer 10

Personally when I am stressed out I feel like my whole mind has quit working. I can't focus on anything.

Answer 11

Stress can trick the mind into thinking that other things are wrong with your body. For example the racing heart, headaches, neck pain and other such ailments.