Role of cross-cultural understanding in dealing with stress

By Prof. Gunapala Nanayakkara

The phenomenon of stress leads to stressful conditions when it is not properly addressed or managed. At the workshop on ‘improving mental well-being of mentally distressed people Dr. J. Rajendra, Deputy Chief of Psychiatry, Scarborough Grace General Hospital, Canada revealed alarming data about the consequences of unmanaged stress. Our society is already multi-cultural and involvement of programs and people from other cultures to work on our problems increases the cross cultural issues.

Stress is an abnormal mental condition that results from the way people respond to events that threaten or challenge them.

Whether it is an assignment or examination deadline, family problem, or even a cumulative series of events such as abrupt disturbances to security in one's living environment, stress can take its toll in many ways, producing both biological and psychological consequences ranging from temporary sickness to long term ailments such as heart diseases and loss of life.

In fact, an entire range of physical problems, known as psycho-physiological disorders, may result from stress.

Many stressors are related to cultural differences. When a person from the American culture speaks objectively by using data and emphasising factual relations, another person from a different culture, may find that such talking is blunt, direct and even rude.

Cultures in Sri Lanka promote communication which can be considered subjective, indirect and circular in argument.

Cultures in Sri Lanka also promote one-way communication and a hierarchical order in which listening has very little place.

The two main cultures in Sri Lanka - Sinhalese and Tamil -have for generations been communicating in this form that is one-way and hierarchical. In our education system, teachers are the ones who communicate (or talk) whereas students are even prohibited from asking questions for clarification.

Learning in universities

I remember when I was in Grade 10, the Sinhala Literature teacher asked me to leave the classroom because I asked a few questions some of which challenged his interpretations of verses. Today, there is an institutionalised sub-culture in our higher education system, which is developed by certain ideological groups, that discourages and prevents university undergraduates questioning their lecturers.

Those who question the wisdom of teachers or lecture notes are often branded as ‘smarties’ or ‘brainees’, who are likely to join the establishment lately, and they are dealt with ‘appropriately’ outside classroom. Learning in the universities has become stressful.

A culture is a complex entity which includes knowledge, beliefs, values, art, morals, customs, and many other habits acquired by members of a given social group and transmitted from generation to generation.

They represent effective solutions to common problems faced by those groups in their environments.

Americans have faced problems in their environment which are different from those faced by people who lived for long in different environments such as Sri Lanka, India, Somalia or China.

Culture is about your mind, heart and hands. It is about the ways in which you think-rational vs. relational, sequential vs. holistic, and how you connect your IQ (intelligence quotient) with EQ (emotional quotient).

It is about your values and attitudes, principles and morality, and dedication. It is about your ways of doing and what you prefer to do naturally Schoolchildren in Sri Lanka mostly wear white clothes to school, wait till they complete their education to look for jobs. They prefer white-collar jobs, status and security in their jobs. Their American counterparts differ widely and they are less stereotyped in their search for work.

Cross-cultural interaction

When different cultures interact (cross-cultural interaction), the differences in cultures may cause or amplify existing causes of stress. Some factors are cognitive, built into the ways of thinking of people, which may cause ambiguity in understanding. Cross-cultural misunderstandings often result from the differences in thinking.

In the evaluative domain, there could be differences in values and attitudes. Such differences exist in relation to values and attitudes dealing with age, authority, seniority individual rights and obligations. Positive attitudes dominate in certain cultures whereas negativism is built into the ways of thinking and perceiving in other cultures.

In Sri Lanka, we often come across people who see problems and their solutions rather than seeing solutions to the problems confronting them.

Cultural factors are intertwined with economic, historical and political factors of situations as well.

Economic deprivation along with a history of social conflict, denial of self respect, absence of a secured future and political uncertainty surrounding the general societal functions create conditions for prolonged situations of stress.

Cross-cultural understanding can improve the effectiveness of medical and psychiatric interventions to solve the problems of stress and distress among members of special social groups and communities.It needs recognition when foreign donor agencies and non-governmental organisations design projects for intervention in this area of development.

The writer is Academic Advisor, Graduate School of Management.

High level of attachment anxiety may lower immunity

Concerns and anxieties about one's close relationships appear to function as a chronic stressor that can compromise immunity, according to new research.

In the study, researchers asked married couples to complete questionnaires about their relationships and collected saliva and blood samples to test participants’ levels of a key stress-related hormone and numbers of certain immune cells.

The research focused on attachment anxiety. Those who are on the high end of the attachment anxiety spectrum are excessively concerned about being rejected, have a tendency to constantly seek reassurance that they are loved, and are more likely to interpret ambiguous events in a relationship as negative.

Married partners who were more anxiously attached produced higher levels of cortisol, a steroid hormone that is released in response to stress, and had fewer T cells - important components of the immune system's defense against infection - than did participants who were less anxiously attached.

“Everyone has these types of concerns now and again in their relationships, but a high level of attachment anxiety refers to people who have these worries fairly constantly in most of their relationships,” said Lisa Jaremka, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Ohio State University's Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research (IBMR).

Though some scientists theorise that attachment anxiety can be traced to inconsistent care during one's infancy, Jaremka noted that there is also research-based evidence that people with attachment anxiety can change.

“It's not necessarily a permanent state of existence,” she said. The study appears online and is scheduled for future print publication in the journal Psychological Science. Jaremka and colleagues tested the health effects of attachment anxiety on 85 couples who had been married for an average of more than 12 years. Most participants were white, and their average age was 39 years.The participants completed a questionnaire called The Experiences in Close Relationships scale. They also reported general anxiety symptoms and their sleep quality. Researchers collected saliva samples over three days and blood samples over two days.

Participants with higher attachment anxiety produced, on average, 11 percent more cortisol than did those with lower attachment anxiety. The more anxiously attached participants also had between 11 percent and 22 percent fewer T cells than did less anxiously attached partners. Four T-cell markers were analyzed in the study.

The combined findings make sense and are likely related, Jaremka said, because cortisol can have immunosuppressive effects - meaning it can inhibit production of these very same T cells. Previous research has suggested that reduced T-cell levels can impair the immune response to vaccines and that low levels of the cells are a hallmark of an aging immune system.

Attachment anxiety is considered a phenomenon related to childhood development, Jaremka explained. At a very young age, children learn whether or not their primary caregivers will respond when the children are in distress. If caregivers are responsive, children learn they can rely on other people.

- MNT

Bullying causes harm - on-line or off

Children who are bullied online or by mobile phone are just as likely to skip school or consider suicide as kids who are physically bullied, according to a study led by a Michigan State University criminologist.

The findings, published in the International Criminal Justice Review, suggest parents, school officials and policymakers should consider bullying experiences both on and offline when creating anti-bullying policies and procedures.

“We should not ignore one form of bullying for the sake of the other,” said Thomas Holt, associate professor of criminal justice. “The results suggest we should find ways to develop school policies to combat bullying within the school environment and then figure out how to translate that to the home, because the risk goes beyond the schoolyard.”

The study is one of two new research papers from MSU scholars dealing with cyberbullying. The other study, led by Saleem Alhabash in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations, suggests positive online comments are an effective way to fight cyberbullying.

Holt and colleagues, using survey data from more than 3,000 third- through 11th-grade students in Singapore, analysed the relationships between physical bullying, cyberbullying and mobile phone bullying on skipping school and suicidal thoughts.

The study, one of the first to explore bullying in Southeast Asia, echoes research findings from the United States and Canada.

According to the study, 22 percent of students who were physically bullied skipped school or thought about skipping.

By comparison, 27 percent of students who were bullied online (which includes email, blogs and chat rooms) and 28 percent who were sent bullying text messages on a mobile phone skipped school or thought about skipping.

Similarly, 22 percent of students who were physically bullied reported suicidal thoughts, while 28 percent of those who reported cyberbullying and 26 percent who were bullied via cell phone said they considered suicide.

In addition, females and younger students were more likely to consider suicide, which reflects other research findings.

Holt said parents should pay attention to warning signs of bullying such as mood changes, sadness, school failures, social withdrawal and a lack of appetite.

When it comes to cyberbullying, he said “careful supervision of youth activity online, including the use of filtering software, can help reduce the likelihood that the child is targeted by bullies via the Web.”

Managing the child's mobile phone use is encouraged, Holt said, although there is evidence kids are less likely to report this type of bullying for fear of losing their phone.

“Thus,” he said, “parents must carefully educate their children on the risk of bullying victimisation via mobile phones and ensure that they can speak to one or both parents about negative experiences.”

- medicalXpress

Scientific breakthrough in study of genetics of myopia

Scientists believe they may be able to discover why children who spend much of their time indoors rather than playing outside are more likely to develop short-sightedness following a breakthrough study into the genetics of myopia.

More than two dozen genes have been linked to an increased risk of developing myopia, a finding that may finally allow researchers to understand why children today are more likely to become short-sighted than children in the past.

Myopia now affects about one in three people in the West and up to 80 percent of people in Asia. In some countries in the Far East as many as 90 percent of children are short-sighted, compared to less than 20 percent a couple of decades ago.Although short-sightedness tends to run in families and has a strong inherited component, the explosive increase in the condition over recent years has been linked with an increase in the time that children spend indoors either studying or playing computer games and watching TV, scientists believe.

A study of more than 45,000 people from Europe and Asia has identified 24 new genes that appear to be involved in triggering the onset of myopia. It has also confirmed the role of two further genes that were already suspected of being involved with short-sightedness, the scientists said.“We already knew that myopia, or short-sightedness, tends to run in families, but until now we knew little about the genetic cause. This study reveals for the first time a group of new genes that are associated with myopia,” said Prof Chris Hammond of King’s College London, who led the study published in Nature Genetics.

“Carriers of some of these genes have a tenfold increased risk of developing the condition…It is an extremely exciting step forward which could potentially lead to better treatment or prevention in the future for millions around the world,” he said. Myopia is caused when the eyeball grows too long, causing light to be focussed just short of the light-sensitive retina at the back of the eye.

Ambient light levels in childhood are thought to control the growth of the eyeball, with low light leading to myopia, Professor Hammond said.

Children who develop myopia when they are very young are more likely to suffer vision problems in later life compared to children who were not short-sighted. In extreme case, myopia can lead to serious vision problems after mid-life, such as glaucoma, detached retina and blindness caused by macular degeneration.

“The more serious problems are in middle age when there is a significant risk of visual loss. The main reason seems to be that the eyeball is longer and the retina is stretched over a wider area,” Professor Hammond said.

The discovery of 26 genes that each play a small but significant role in myopia opens the way to understanding the biochemical pathways that may lead to the overgrowth of the eyeball, and ways of preventing it, he said.“Currently, possibilities to reduce progression of myopia are very limited. While one drug, called atropine, may reduce progression, it dilates the pupil and causes problems with light sensitivity and difficulty with reading,” Prof Hammond said.

- The Independent