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Stress refers to a situation of frustration, conflict and threat that has adverse impact on the mind and body or psychological and physiological abilities of the individual. Stress is a force which strains the physical and psychological adjustment of the organism to his environment leading to a maladjusted personality and physical and mental illness.
Chattopadhya (1981) investigated the bilateral skin resistance responses in anxiety in 20 male and 20 female human subjects in aroused and non- aroused situations. In the second experiment 12 patients with anxiety states and 12 aroused normal and 12 non-aroused normal were tested.
Results showed that when aroused normal subjects manifested similar tension and anxiety as those of patients only during the aroused situation bilateral difference in the slope of the resting skin conductance level over time were evident.
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In a subsequent study Bandyopadhaya and Ghosh — Chattopadhay and Majumdar (1986) investigated the relationship between the extent of stressful life experiences and alterations in the level of hormones in the lung cancer and oral cancer patients. Results revealed that both the cancer groups showed a highest degree of exposure to aversive (stressful) life events prior to the onset of cancer.
Mishra and Panda (1983) designed a study to find out the effect of psychogenic stress on biochemical changes in rats. Results indicated that psychogenic stress could induce significant changes in the blood sugar, urea, creatinine level and also in the body weights of animals.
Psychogenic stress could not induce any significant change in the potassium and sodium level of the animals. It failed to show any significant sex effect in response to stressful situations.
Mishra and Mohapatra (1984) in a significant study attempted to assess the impact of stress on behaviour of albino rats. The result showed that the stressed animals were found to be more emotional, lower in discrimination learning, more distractible and more suppressive than the unstressed animals.
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Stress was found to have no significant effect on spontaneous motor activity, investigatory exploration, Hebb-Williams Maze learning and on aggression. Stress also caused reduction of body weights in animals.
Stressed mothers had a shorter gestation period and delivered fewer number of offspring. Highest number of males was born to stressed mothers bred with unstressed males. Parental stress was found to have no impact on the emotionality, spontaneous motor activity and exploration of their offspring.
However, the offspring born to stress parents were found to be more emotional than that born to unstressed parents only on the thigmotaxis measure of emotionality.
A study by Mohanty and P.K. Mishra (1988) attempted to assess the impact of environmental stress on behaviour of rats. Findings led to the conclusion that sensory deprivation stress and social isolation stress have similar behavioural effects and they may reflect similar physiological mechanisms.
Mohanty and S. Mohanty (1990) designed a study to assess the impact of stress pheromones on the behaviour of male and female recipient rats.
Results revealed that rats which received stress pheromones were found to be more emotional, more timid but less explorative, more aroused, poorer in discrimination learning and its reversal learning ability, poorer in maze learning and poorer in problem solving ability, reasoning ability or intellectual ability than the rats which received non-stress pheromones.
The above studies and similar other studies conducted in this area have reported significant effect of stress pheromones on the emotionality and spontaneous motor activity of the pheromone recipient subjects besides retarding the discrimination learning and reversal learning ability, problem solving and reasoning and intellectual capacity of the recipient subjects.
It also produces avoidance responses in the odour recipients.
Sinha, Ambalika (1991) (Motilal Nehru Regional Engineering College, Dept. of Applied Math’s, Allahabad) in a study entitled “Reality oriented or neurotic death anxiety Metaphysical beliefs as coping strategies” investigated the role of metaphysical beliefs (i.e. existence and attributes of God, afterlife and consequences of suffering) as predictors of the threat perceived in pictures depicting death.
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A pictorial test of perceived threat was constructed employing pictures depicting death and non-death scenes.
120 students of Classes 11 and 12 with equal number of boys from rural and urban background (mean age = 16.5 yrs.) participated as Ss. Findings supported Freud’s view that the prospect of death impels man to fabricate divine being to protect himself from the ultimate threats of nature to overcome the neurodc anxiety of death.
Karthikeyan, R. and Swaminathan, V.D. (U. Madras) conducted a study on Behavioural management of masturbating guilt (1992). 6 cases (aged 17- 22 yrs.) of masturbating guilt with secondary anxiety and depressive features were referred for therapy.
A brief behavioural package with sex counselling and Jacobson’s Progressive Muscular Relaxation (JPMR) were given for 7 Sessions to each client. A significant reduction of symptoms was found after therapy. Self report indicated more than 80% improvement in all the symptoms.