Stress Management Plan (Essay Sample)

Stress Management Plan
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Stress Management Plan
Modern society values hard work and achievement, and finding time for relaxation is often challenging, which results in stress. Stress refers to physical and emotional reactions due to life difficulties. The experiences occur when one perceives a disparity between their responsibilities and the resources at their disposal. Stress leads to negative impacts, including immunological, cardiovascular, and neuroendocrine malfunctioning. Eradicating stress among populations has led to various stress management strategies to reduce its levels and enhance daily functioning. This task aims to develop an evidence-based stress management plan incorporating motivational interviewing techniques for the affected population. The stress management intervention will entail those whose effectiveness will be evaluated using S.M.A.R.T goals.
Effective stress management helps the affected people to improve their lives and become more productive, healthy, and happy. The goal is to help them attain a balanced life and develop resilience to address related challenges. Stress management first requires one to identify the leading causes by using various stress assessment tools. Stress assessments help recognize the extent to which a person is impacted by it before developing strategies that help them cope. Accordingly, one of the most common stress assessment frameworks is the Perceived Stress Scale. This scale assesses how a person perceives various situations as stressful. It comprises a series of questions designed to measure how overloaded and unpredictable one feels their life is and uses direct questions to explore their present stress level. The Perceived Stress Scale inquires about the person’s feelings and thoughts using generalized and straightforward questions within the last month. The questions used in the assessment ensure it is bias-free without targeting any particular subpopulation. Further, stress management will be coupled with motivational interview techniques.
Motivational interviewing refers to a patient-centred counselling style based on various human psychology principles. The patient-based directive technique aims to boost intrinsic motivation by resolving ambivalence (Miller & Rollnick, 2002). Motivational interviewing uses a collaborative objective-oriented conversation style to enhance the client’s commitment and motivation to pursue change. In addition, it utilizes four guiding principles, including resisting the urge to right the client, understanding what motivates the client, empathetic listening, and patient empowerment (Hall et al., 2012). Thus, motivational interviewing methods will help stress management by strengthening their motivation and commitment to cope with it by exploring their reasons for a change in an atmosphere of empathy, acceptance, and compassion.
One of the best interventions for stress management is yoga, an ancient Indian ritual comprising physical, cognitive, and spiritual practices and ethical disciplines. As a science, yoga strives to enhance wellness by balancing physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental aspects. While yoga has changed over time, it comprises primarily physical postures, meditation, relaxation, and breathing techniques. In recent times, yoga’s popularity has grown because it is thought to improve body and mind control and general well-being. Studies have revealed that yoga can reduce blood pressure, heart rate, stress, muscle tension, cortisol levels, and anxiety (Riley & Park, 2015). A controlled study by Maddux et al. (2017) showed that yoga practitioners showed a significant decrease in anxiety and stress and an improvement in general psychological well-being. Yoga is a suitable natural stress reliever as it combines self-awareness and physical fitness and has a relatively higher payoff relative to the effort required. Additionally, the yoga intervention will have SMART goals to assess its effectiveness. Closely related to yoga is meditation, which is an excellent stress reliever because it enhances mindfulness and situational awareness without using prescribed medications. Stress reduction using yoga will be assessed for effectiveness every month using motivational interviewing techniques and the Perceived Stress Scale. One of the goals of the intervention is to reduce stress within two months. At the end of the intervention, the stress level should fall below 13 in the Perceived Stress Scale.
For health professionals, recognizing and differentiating their perceptions is a crucial part of cultural sensitivity. In the growing multicultural society, it is critical to recognize that non-western medical practices can be unsuitable for some patients. This inconvenience arises because this practice is considered faith-based, thus deterring some patients from using it. Additionally, the health professional might be accused of cultural misappropriation. Therefore, the health worker should be aware and sensitive about the various cultural beliefs and practices that shape the client's life and incorporate their traditions and beliefs about treatment to preserve their sanctity and i