Stress: Distress Classification

In the last byte, we understood why stress behaves the way it is indicated by the Yerkes-Dodson Law. In today’s byte, we look at some of the implications of distress on the individual front.

As indicated in the table (in this blog), we can classify the individual distress into the following

1. Psychological Disorder
2. Medical Illness
3. Behavioral Problems

The most common types of psychological distress are depression, burnout, and psychosomatic disorders. Depression and Burnout could lead to emotional exhaustion which internal may also be caused by the requirement for emotional expression on the job. Psychosomatic disorders are physical disorders with a psychological origin.

Numerous medical illnesses have their origin in a stress-related component. While there is no clear evidence that stress is a direct causal agent in the onset of diseases like cancer, it definitely would play an indirect role in the progression of the disease.

Behavioral problems are the third form of individual distress. These include workplace aggression, substance abuse, accidents etc. Since we see examples of this all over the news, this need not be explained explicitly here.

These three forms of individual distress cause a burden of personal suffering, and could also lead to a collective burden reflecting in organizational distress.