Behavior Health And Environmental Stress

Eight years ago, four psychologists with varying backgrounds but a common in terest in the impact of environmental stress on behavior and health met to plan a study of the effects of aircraft noise on children. The impetus for the study was an article in the Los Angeles Times about architectural interventions that were planned for several noise-impacted schools under the air corridor of Los Angeles Interna tional Airport. These interventions created an opportunity to study the same chil dren during noise exposure and then later after the exposure had been attenuated. The study was designed to test the generality of several noise effects that had been well established in laboratory experimental studies. It focused on three areas: the relationship between noise and personal control, noise and attention, and noise and cardiovascular response. Two years later, a second study, designed to replicate and extend findings from the first, was conducted.

A systematic 1982 on human reactions to five environmental stress factors.

Environmental illness is a concept of growing concern to all health professionals. Patients with problems presumably caused by sick buildings, electromagnetic fields and hypersensitivity to chemicals--to name a few--are often referred to psychologists, psychiatrists, and other counselors. The battery worker with fatigue, headaches, abdominal pain and an elevated lead level...the assembly worker with pain and numbness in her hand and delayed median nerve conduction...the patient who develops typical contact dermatitis after working with epoxies..., these are straightforward cases. But they are in the minority. In many cases, needy, demanding, and difficult patients present complex and challenging psychological issues. Practitioners often lack the training or wisdom to handle these issues effectively. We know that exposure to lead, mercury, and PCBs affect psychological development and behavior; we know much less about the effects of thousands of other chemicals in the environment. In addition, global climate change, social disruption, and the spread of infections will--in the near future--expose people to novel environmental threats. Symptoms caused by toxins can overlap those caused by fear, stress, and depression, and the clinical picture can mimic a variety of other mental disorders. On the other hand, the natural environment can also be a healer. Research shows that hospital stays are shortened and the need for pain medication reduced for patients exposed to nature, even in images, or to the company of animals. Nursing home patients live longer if allowed to keep pets, and one controlled study shows that caring for animals reduces disruptive behavior in even the most difficult ADD children. This book offers the first overview of the many ways the environment can affect mental health and illness. It will prove to be an important and valuable resource for physicians in psychiatry, public health, and environmental medicine; for clinical and counseling psychologists and social workers; and for environmental researchers and advocates worldwide.

The mastery of a variety of biomedical They avoided the self-destruction and dis techniques has led our society to the solu ease that can so readily follow the escalation tion of the problems in environmental con of social disorder in an isolated colony. By trol imposed by space flight. By an unparal following a "code of civility" that may be as leled social cooperative effort, man has much a part of man's biologic inheritance as launched himself successfully on the path of his speech, they established cultures in interplanetary exploration and space travel. which power was exercised with sufficient By a like synthesis of knowledge available to respect to establish a consensus. They fol him, Stone Age man kept a foothold on tiny lowed revered cultural canons, using an Pacific atolls for the better part of a thousand accumulation of rational empiric data from years, despite obliterating hurricanes and social experience to modify and control the inherited biogrammar. This we often fail to limited resources. By combining empiric do. There is growing evidence that it is phys navigational skills, such as the sighting of stars with intuitive feeling for ocean swells iologically possible for the left hemisphere of and other subtle cues, tiny populations were the brain, which deals with logic and lan maintained in communication over vast dis guage, to be cut off from the right hemi tances.

Examining the link between the environment and mental health, this study describes how environmental influences help clinicians and researchers to understand mental illness and disabilities. It argues that the attention paid to environmental factors may af

Environmental illness is a concept of growing concern to all health professionals. Patients with problems presumably caused by sick buildings, electromagnetic fields and hypersensitivity to chemicals--to name a few--are often referred to psychologists, psychiatrists, and other counselors. The battery worker with fatigue, headaches, abdominal pain and an elevated lead level...the assembly worker with pain and numbness in her hand and delayed median nerve conduction...the patient who develops typical contact dermatitis after working with epoxies..., these are straightforward cases. But they are in the minority. In many cases, needy, demanding, and difficult patients present complex and challenging psychological issues. Practitioners often lack the training or wisdom to handle these issues effectively. We know that exposure to lead, mercury, and PCBs affect psychological development and behavior; we know much less about the effects of thousands of other chemicals in the environment. In addition, global climate change, social disruption, and the spread of infections will--in the near future--expose people to novel environmental threats. Symptoms caused by toxins can overlap those caused by fear, stress, and depression, and the clinical picture can mimic a variety of other mental disorders. On the other hand, the natural environment can also be a healer. Research shows that hospital stays are shortened and the need for pain medication reduced for patients exposed to nature, even in images, or to the company of animals. Nursing home patients live longer if allowed to keep pets, and one controlled study shows that caring for animals reduces disruptive behavior in even the most difficult ADD children. This book offers the first overview of the many ways the environment can affect mental health and illness. It will prove to be an important and valuable resource for physicians in psychiatry, public health, and environmental medicine; for clinical and counseling psychologists and social workers; and for environmental researchers and advocates worldwide.

Adolescenceâ€"beginning with the onset of puberty and ending in the mid-20sâ€"is a critical period of development during which key areas of the brain mature and develop. These changes in brain structure, function, and connectivity mark adolescence as a period of opportunity to discover new vistas, to form relationships with peers and adults, and to explore one's developing identity. It is also a period of resilience that can ameliorate childhood setbacks and set the stage for a thriving trajectory over the life course. Because adolescents comprise nearly one-fourth of the entire U.S. population, the nation needs policies and practices that will better leverage these developmental opportunities to harness the promise of adolescenceâ€"rather than focusing myopically on containing its risks. This report examines the neurobiological and socio-behavioral science of adolescent development and outlines how this knowledge can be applied, both to promote adolescent well-being, resilience, and development, and to rectify structural barriers and inequalities in opportunity, enabling all adolescents to flourish.