Free «Social Readjustment Rating» Essay Paper

Each life stage of the person is hard and complicated, as one faces different problems that become the reason of stressful condition. In order to learn more about sensations that stress causes, psychologists create different scales of stress measurement. Measurement of stress can help to understand reasons and effects of stress on health. Social readjustment scale shows the exact reflection of stress levels, but it does not include special characteristics of social strata and different cultural backgrounds.

Firstly, there are various measures of stress, but the most popular are physiological and life events measures. Physiological measures take into account blood pressure, heart rate, galvanic skin response and secretion of hormones (Brannon & Feist, 2010). People’s reactions change in accordance with emotional and social circumstances. This kind of measures is good, as special devices are used to rate people’s resistance to stress. Anyway these devices may also become outer irritants (Brannon & Feist, 2010).

 

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Secondly, the social readjustment rating scale (SRRS) is used nowadays as an example of stress immunity indicators. They were invented by Thomas H. Holmes and Richard Rahe in 1967 (Holes & Rahe, 1967).  This scale includes 43 points that represent the most common life events. Death of a spouse is on the highest position in the scale and minor violations of the law are on the lowest. One supposes that stress ratings depend on the age and social position of man. Changes in schools or colleges and in social activities should stand on the first place of the table. Marriage is in the middle of the list, but for every woman it should be on the first place. Divorce can stand on different levels of the list; treatment to this event depends on the person’s character and his nervous system. Son’s or daughter’s leaving home should get forty points for parents, as children are the most important in their lives.

The Social Readjustment Rating Scale identifies up to seventy percent of real causes of stress. This rating is a kind of statistics. There are different degrees of stress related with various individuals; social indicators divide people in accordance with age, social position, material position and cultural backgrounds. For example, youth gives maximal rating to everything, what happens in their lives, because depression stressful feelings can be the result of that event. Adults have family problems, they live for their children, that is why events in their children’s life can cause higher degree of stress, than life events in their own lives. Representatives of different social strata have different reasons for stress. Absence of food and place for living can become the reason for degradation process for lower classes, when higher classes even do not worry about this. Individuals are divided into resistant and mentally unbalanced by cultural and social standards. Resistance to stress can also differ due to man’s place of work – when person has a lot of stressful situations at work, he/she becomes upset for nothing.

In conclusion, the social readjustment scale does not show the exact reflection of stress levels. People have different appraisal of the environment situation and the tactics of an appropriate behavior. Individuals from different social strata, which have various cultural backgrounds and people of different age, have distinct attitude to life events.