Stress and the Diversity of Cultures

Stress and diversity is a broad subject which encompasses many aspects of stress in society. One sure thing about society is diversity and, you will find varieties of perceptions and reactions to stress. Our ideas about stress are shaped by our cultural background and you will find a multicultural people who embrace different beliefs and practices in regard to stress. It is vital to ask yourself how your environment has affected you as you deal with everyday stresses. The traditional African approach to stress and mental disorder was quite unique and in almost every African settlement, they were a people who believed in investing almost everything just to have an easy and simple life which would be stress free.

There are various tools that they used to ensure that stress and other forms of negativity were kept at bay. One tool was music which was an effective food to the soul as well as a morale booster. Many people went about their strenuous work with music sweeping through their environment ensuring that stress did not have space to pick through. Another tool in the communities that helped keep away stress was the sense of community. By living so close together with many family members, women and men spent their time pouring out their hearts which is a form of therapy, therefore unlike the diverse modern communities of today, traditional communities were very closely knit together.

History has shown that people who lived longer had a special appreciation to peace of mind. In our modern society, stress is a leading killer and no remedy has been formulated to eliminate stress and we are slowly learning that it might be the less expensive things of life like family, laughter and music that are going to do the trick. All this is part of diversity of stress and major strides have been made to help deal with stress. They focus on the causes of stress and it has been found that everyone has a unique or individual reaction to stress. Also, it has been found that stresssors will not affect everyone the same way. Stressors are factors that are known to cause stress in life.

Some cultures have their own special remedies of dealing with stress like meditation for inhabitants of the Asian continent. Some of the cures have been associated with spiritualism where some cultures associate stress and its adverse effects with evil. Whichever way people perceive and deal with stress, one thing is very clear, stress affects every community no matter what their practices may be. We may be very diverse but stress connects us all to emphasis that it is a human problem that we have to constantly battle with. The basics of stress are that there is usually an internal or an external cause which play a major role in determining the outcome of stress in the person. Stress causes some of the major diseases and it is a silent killer which will affect your life negatively even if you cannot touch it.