Mental Health 101 - How Stress Can Damage Your Brain More Than You Know

Stress is a feeling of imbalance due to events that have a negative effect on a person. It is however, a normal way that the body responds to such events. This happens because the body prepares its defense system to counter the feared danger; this is a process to ensure mental, physical and mental health.

It is important to note that the body doesn't differentiate between physical and psychological stress. When a person is under stress due to a traffic jam, or a lot of bills, a busy program or when arguing with a colleague, the body reacts in the same way it will react to a life or death situation.

Since stress can be said to be an alert mechanism to the body's defense system, it helps the body in different ways. First, it helps one to stay on the line of duty, alert and with energy. In addition, in emergency circumstances, it can save life by giving an individual additional power for defense and many other helpful ways.

However, when stress goes beyond a given limit, it turns to becoming a damaging factor on issues of life such as health, relationships and productivity. In this condition, a person is said to suffer from mental illness. Sometimes, this leads to a nervous breakdown. At this stage, forces in the mind push and pull against each other, thereby, thoughts and emotions are swayed. Hence, the person feels not in control his or her life.

When the person is a state of instability, they depend on their emotions to create sadness, which develops into negative thoughts. At this instance, the person should be able to come up with a solution, but if the solution is not found, and the negative emotions become overwhelming, then mental illness is said to occur.

Prolonged season under this kind of mental state coupled with a faulty area in the mind leads to additional thoughts. If the problem is unknown to the victim, it creates a raised level of stress and copping mechanism goes down. What happens is that stress changes the equilibrium in the brain and this applies pressure to the mind. Consequently, if the instability is not corrected, the mind faces chemical imbalances leading to tumors and diseases, thereafter.

A psychological response to a prolonged experience of high level stress that reoccurs is known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). A person experiences anxiety, nightmares, sweats at night and avoid social gatherings. In addition, the victim will suffer from daily abnormal stress and they will be trying to avoid it at the same time.

Post traumatic Stress Disorder now becomes a very serious mental health problem since the victim has suffered extreme trauma, therefore, making it easy to be attacked by diseases such as high blood pressure, heart attacks and other medical complications.

Chronic stress interferes with every system as early, be it digestion, respiratory, reproduction and speeds aging. In addition the stress can re-write the victims brain and enhance vulnerability to more anxiety, panic and depression.