Homework Question on Gender, Stress and Mental Health
- Focus on the gender-related similarities and differences, and similarities related to stress, coping, and the related mental health problems.
- Think about specific stressful life situations, such as divorce, marriage, entering a new school, job changes or loss, dealing with sick family members or aging parents, the death of someone close, having a baby, etc. Consider some of the stressors specific to these situations.
- Select one stressful situation to focus on in this Discussion (e.g., divorce, marriage, a job change or loss, a sick family member or aging parent, a death in the family, etc.).
- Explore the topic of stress on the American Psychological Association Web site. Focus on stress issues related to the life situation you selected.
- Now think about how stressors may be different for men and women in general and specific to the situation you chose.
- How might men and women deal with the stressors differently? Why might there be differences? With these thoughts in mind
- Note: Put the stressful life situation you selected in the first line of your post. You will be asked to respond to a colleague who selected a different stressful life situation than you did.
- Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to the Learning Resources.
Homework Answer on Gender, Stress and Mental Health
In this discussion, the focus is on marriage, which is one of the stressful life situations. Apparently, marriages are accompanied by stress issues such as the role a person plays in the family, domestic violence, lack of discipline, dishonesty, unfaithfulness, poverty, lack of communication, and the inability to balance work and family.Life stressors such as those mentioned above may be different for men and women.
In a general context, men experience different stress issues and are seen to deal with stress issues in manners different from those of women (Brannon, 2015). For instance, men and women experience violence, which is a key stressor, at different rates. In the modern society, violence targets women more than it targets men, and thus, the fact that life stressors are different for men and women is underscored.
Moreover, discrimination, which is a key life stressor, is experienced more by women than men. In the marriage context, men and women play different family roles, and this, results in different stress levels for both. For instance, women in marriages are seen as family caretakers, and this causes significant stress for them. On the other hand, men are not involved largely in taking care of the family, and this means that they experience minimal stress in marriages.