The International Stress Management Association (ISMA), a non-profit organization with a mission to “promote sound knowledge and best practice in stress management, mental health, and wellbeing,” organizes International Stress Awareness Week (ISAW) every year during the first full week in November. Along with ISAW, the ISMA also organizes and promotes International Stress Awareness Day (ISAD), which occurs on the first Wednesday of November.
In 2024, International Stress Awareness Week (ISAW) is November 4th through November 8th, while International Stress Awareness Day (ISAD) is on Wednesday, November 6th.
ISAW hashtag: #StressAwarenessWeek
ISAD hashtag: #StressAwarenessDay
The ISMA chooses overall themes for every year, independent of ISAW and ISAD. This year, they chose this theme:
Campaigning to Reduce Stress and Improve Wellbeing.
For ISAW 2024 – the 50th anniversary of this awareness month – the organizers chose this theme:
Improve stress management and combat the stigma of stress and mental health issues.
The center of the week is Stress Awareness Day – the 25th anniversary of this awareness day – which will include advocacy and awareness events around the world, all with the goal of reducing stress, improving stress management, reducing stigma around stress and mental health, and improving basic wellbeing for anyone who experiences stress – which means literally everyone on earth.
Special events for the 50th anniversary include stress management awards – apply here for consideration – and the Online Global Stress & Wellbeing Summit, which features expert panel discussions on the following topics:
- Beyond the Half Century: ISAW Past, Present, and Future
- Community Care: How Organizations Can Champion Health
- Building Resilience: Foods and Supplements for Stress Reduction
- How to Foster a Healthy Workplace
- AI and The Future: How We Can Minimize Stress in the Information Age
In this article, we’ll define stress, talk about its potential negative consequences – with a focus on children, adolescents, and young adults – then offer helpful suggestions about how to manage stress. We’ll close with ways everyone can participate in both International Stress Awareness Week (ISAW) and International Stress Awareness Day (ISAD).
What is Stress?
The American Psychological Association (APA) Dictionary of Psychology offers the following definition of stress, which is both comprehensive and helpful to our overall understanding of stress, how it appears, how it feels, and its consequences:
“Stress [is the] physiological response to internal or external stressors. Stress involves changes affecting nearly every system of the body, influencing how people feel and behave. For example, it may be manifested by palpitations, sweating, dry mouth, shortness of breath, fidgeting, accelerated speech, augmentation of negative emotions (if already being experienced), and longer duration of stress fatigue. Severe stress is manifested by the general adaptation syndrome. By causing these mind–body changes, stress contributes directly to psychological and physiological disorder and disease and affects mental and physical health, reducing quality of life. See also chronic stress.”
Let’s follow up immediately by offering the APA definition of chronic stress, which also helps prepare us for a discussion of the consequences of stress. Here’s how the APA defines chronic stress:
“The physiological or psychological response to a prolonged internal or external event. The stressor need not remain physically present to have its effects. Recollections of it can substitute for its presence an sustain chronic stress.”
This brings us to something about stress that we all need to understand, which is that we all experience stress almost every day of our lives. We all experience chronic stress as well. There’s another thing to consider, too. Stress and stressors in and of themselves are neither good nor bad. What causes problems is not the various stimuli we experience, but our stress response, which we’ll discuss now.
Our Stress Response: How We Handle Stress and Stressors
Child development experts at the Harvard Center on the Developing Child identify three distinct categories of stress response:
Positive Stress Response.
This category of stress response is a typical and healthy part of development. Positive stress response may happen in reaction to life changes like moving and/or changing schools, standard daily/acute events such as tests at school, or stress associated with social situation. Temporary physical and emotional phenomena, which appear and fade quickly, define this type of stress response. In most cases, these acute responses resolve on their own, without the help of a parent or mental health professional, but parents do help kids work through positive stress responses almost every day.
Tolerable Stress Response.
This category of stress response resembles a positive stress response, with one difference: the response is more intense and severe. Serious, life-changing circumstances, such as the death of family member, a natural disaster, or a significant injury or illness and experiences can trigger a tolerable stress response. A tolerable stress response can result in significant emotional, psychological, and emotional consequences.
However, through relationships with engaged and aware adults – called buffering relationships – kids who experience a tolerable stress response to major life events can process the circumstances in a healthy and productive manner and reduce or eliminate long-term negative consequences.
Toxic Stress Response.
This type of stress response occurs in response to chronic adversity, including physical/sexual abuse/neglect, experiencing/witnessing violence, living with a parent with a mental health or substance use disorder, and experiencing chronic poverty. Experiencing these events over time activates powerful stress hormones, which can result in significant negative consequences. A toxic stress response is associated with organ damage, developmental problems, impaired cognitive function, and chronic illness.
Without the buffering effect of positive, protective relationships with engaged and aware adults, toxic stress can cause physical, emotional, psychological, and social problems throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
The Consequences of Stress: Why We Need Stress Management and Mental Health Support
Unresolved toxic stress – i.e. chronic toxic stress with no buffering support from adults – is associated with the following physical issues:
- Heart problems
- Digestive problems
- Muscle decay
- Decreased bone density
- Impaired immune function
- Impaired reproductive function
- High blood pressure
- Weight problems
- Chronic fatigue
Unresolved toxic stress is associated with the following emotional issues:
- Sadness/depression
- Anxiety
- Anger/irritability
- Overwhelm
- Pessimism
In addition, unresolved toxic stress is associated with the following functional/behavioral issues:
- Eating too much or too little
- Tantrums
- Alcohol/drug use
- Withdrawal from friends, family, and favorite activities
- Memory problems
- Difficulty at school
The common culprit is stress hormones, primarily cortisol. When our body experiences an acute stressor, such as a near-miss car accident, or – back early in our evolution – when we encountered a predator, our sympathetic nervous system springs into action and floods our body with hormones that help us meet the moment. That helped when we needed to run or fight the predator, because the hormones give us the extra strength and energy we need to survive the moment.
That’s our fight or flight response – and it only helps when we actually need to fight or flee.
Because after the threat passes, we don’t need those hormones anymore – and they damage our body. For instance, after a near-miss car accident, elevated hormones may help us temporarily, but if we keep reliving the event for weeks and months afterward, our nervous system keeps flooding our body with stress hormones – which cause escalating problems – like those we list above – over time.
That’s how one significant stressor from the past can become toxic, and cause ongoing issues: each time an individual thinks of the event, the hormonal cascade recurs, and our bodies are not equipped to tolerate those stress hormones over a long period of time.
Stress Management: How We Can Reduce Acute and Chronic Stress
The reason we hear about stress management so often is because we need it. We all experience stress every day, but with no way to manage it, our daily stress can become chronic. That chronic stress, over time, can cause the same problems as toxic stress, over time.
Therefore, we all need a robust set of stress management tools and skills.
We adapted these stress management suggestions from this helpful primer on stress reduction from Mental Health America (MHA):
Top Tips for Reducing Stress During Stress Awareness Week
1. Set Boundaries.
One way to manage stress is to reduce it. If your daily life becomes too much, and the stress of all your commitments becomes overwhelming, there’s one little word that can help: no. This goes for everyone from children to adults. You can say no to things that aren’t necessary, don’t help you, and aren’t yours to handle.
2. Avoid Superhero/Martyr Patterns.
This is part of learning to set boundaries and say no, but it’s more of an internal thing we do when we try to help others: we take on too much, try too hard, and sacrifice our short-term needs in order to help someone else manage their short-term needs. This means our short-term needs suffer, which can lead to long-term stress, which can turn toxic. Therefore, when offering your support to others, ask yourself if it might increase your stress. If it does, consider altering your manner of support so that it doesn’t increase your default stress levels, but instead, reduces them for you and the person you help.
3. Mindfulness/Meditation.
We hear about mindfulness everywhere – and all the time – these days because it’s a simple and effective tool for reducing stress that anyone can learn quickly and easily. It’s true: you can learn basic mindfulness techniques, which you can use immediately, in about an hour. Perfecting them takes time, but the benefits begin to appear right away. Any amount of mindful meditation helps, but we suggest about 20 minutes a day to start.
4. Exercise and Activity
One of the most accessible ways to reduce stress is by staying active, and exercise is the best way to access the physical and emotional benefits of activity. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advises about two and a half hours of moderate exercise per week, or a little over an hour of vigorous activity per week for maximum results. With that said, any amount of activity is better than none, with regards to stress reduction. If you’re not active at all, start with an easy 20-minute walk, as many days of the week as you can manage.
5. Interests and Hobbies
This is especially important for children, adolescents, and young adults. Developing passions and learning fun, interesting ways to pass the time is crucial as you grow and mature. And during the early years, it’s easy to try lots of things: between school, and parents, and community activities, you have opportunities to learn new things nearly every day. If you’re stressed, then ask yourself, “Have I been doing anything fun or interesting to take my mind of matters?” If not, then make a real effort to seek out something new, or return to something you used to do that you love: in either case, losing yourself in something you love works wonders for stress.
6. Lifestyle: Healthy Eating, Healthy Sleeping
These are the real basics. With regards to food, the best diet for physical and mental health includes whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean meat. It’s important to avoid processed foods, excess sugar, and caffeine. Adults should limit alcohol intake. Where sleep is concerned, the average adult needs 7-8 hours of sleep per night, the average child needs 10-12 hours of sleep per night, and the average teen needs about 8-10 hours of sleep per night. A good meal and a good night’s sleep work wonders – and when you get them night after night, good things happen.
7. Seek Help and Support
Perhaps this belongs at the top of the list: when you’re stressed, talk to someone you know and trust. A friend, a loved one, a coach, a teacher – anyone who knows you and wants what’s best for you will lend a sympathetic ear. There are times when saying things out loud is enough to process them – and receiving the kindness and support of another person facilitates the process. If talking through things with a friend or loved one doesn’t help, consider seeking professional support from a qualified mental health counselor or therapist.
When you step back and take the long view, it’s easy to see that stress management and wellbeing go hand in hand. With all the ups and downs in life, it’s hard to be even-keeled all the time. That’s why we need people and practices to help us reduce our stress: otherwise, the constant flood of stress hormones can – and will – disrupt our peace of mind and overall happiness.
How to Do Your Part for International Stress Awareness Week
There are two goals associated with ISAW and ISAD:
- Reduce stress and improve wellbeing.
- Improve stress management and combat the stigma of stress and mental health issues.
The first way to do your part – if you’re the parent of a stressed child, teen, or young adult – is by modeling healthy behavior. This means you eat a healthy diet, get plenty of exercise, activity, and sleep. You make time for hobbies, know some basic stress reduction techniques, and have a strong support network of people to talk to when you need help.
We’re not describing a perfect person here. What we mean is eating healthy most of the time, getting enough exercise and sleep more often than not, and using basic stress reduction techniques – from hobbies to mindfulness to therapy – when you need them, rather than waiting for a crisis. If you model these behaviors as the default mode of functioning, the people who see you every day – e.g. your kids – will follow your lead, and learn stress reduction gradually, over time, without realizing it.
Next, to promote awareness in your community, we suggest using the hashtag #StressAwarenessWeek in social media posts – if you have social media – between November 4th and November 8th, and using the hashtag #StressAwarenessDay on Wednesday, November 6th.
Finally, when the topic of stress comes up, share what you know. You can point people toward this article, or tell them what you’ve learned about the negative consequences of chronic stress – and how to mitigate or completely eliminate them with effective stress management techniques.
