Vaccination against stress
A vaccination is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease.
The idea of something being taken by someone that improves immunity is an idea that stress prevention needs to adopt.
I’ve always felt that penetrating the consciousness of managers about the issues of stress has a lot to do with language, and that I, in particular, haven’t yet stumbled across the language that makes the difference.
However, I’m in the final stages of preparing OrganisationHealth Stress Management Standards and am reviewing all my work in describing the behaviours that promote the antidote to stress, which can be seen in various publications and, now, in the IHM Management Code. It occurs to me that I’m preparing a psycho-vaccine that stimulates the resilience (immunity system) of individuals – an idea, if expressed well, might just have an impact on the consciousness of managers.
Just as we are encouraged to take actions to strengthen our immunity against certain diseases and conditions, such as being physically fit being a contributor to preventing heart disease as being physically fit also embraces a balanced diet, so too we are encouraging people to strengthen their resilience (immunity)against adverse events by being both stronger in confidence, more subtle and assertive (not a contradiction) in interaction, and more structured in our daily activities.
This is, I think, complementary to the contributions of physical fitness experts and nutritionalists who offer services to prevent stress as they are adding to the resilience (immunity) of people against the impact that stress has on the psychological wellbeing of individuals – hence our expansion of our resilience programme to include physical and nutritional advice.
Maybe someone has got some language ideas that could be used to build on this idea that can be easily picked up by the target population for this work – managers.
Derek Mowbray
