Life is full of incongruities especially in the realm of health, it is filled with Stress. Although a person maintains a very strict and healthy lifestyle all throughout one’s life, yet it is not unusual to fall sick. It is very difficult to predict which person will fall sick and which one will remain healthy. Health is not only about maintaining physical wellness but also having a healthy mind. Healthy mind cannot be achieved by just working out regularly, staying away from drinking or smoking, and maintaining a balanced diet. It needs to be practiced wholeheartedly. As long as a person does not believe what he practices it doesn’t do him any good.
There are many people who take good care of themselves and still get sick, whereas still others who do not, remain healthy. Several researches have been conducted for a long time in the past regarding this and researches are still going on to find a genuine consequence. It is suggested from former investigations that good health is determined not only by our lifestyle but also by a complex interaction among genetic, psychological, cultural and social factors. All these factors, along with a person’s personality, combine to produce good or poor health. Health psychologists in different business organisations have their primary aim of identifying the significant relationships between the psychological variables at work, and the mental health of the workers. Psychologist utilise various methods study these interconnections.
Stress at work has become a major health related problem, as we progress the new millennium. As the frustration, tolerance of people is going down; the stress levels are increasing at an alarming rate. People are easily frustrated, offended, fatigued, irritated, nowadays and as a consequence they have a tendency to give a easily, much before even they exercise their full potential. All of these are major drawbacks of stress. Stress is not always bad. Eustress helps individuals to perform well in competitive situations and exams. In fact, it boosts confidence, will power and the driving force. On the other hand, distress is severely damaging to the mental health of individuals since they bring much mental confusion and turbulence. Stress has some major effects in influencing the health and performance of individuals, in all sphere of life. Also in addition to stress some of our beliefs and attitudes influence the way in which we interpret certain health symptoms, and does affect our willingness to seek necessary medical assistance.
There are many research evidences which suggest that stress has an influence over the aptitude and ability of human beings. General aptitude test measures the general mental ability which is required in all kinds of work. A person who has more general ability than the special ability, is more fit in day to day activities, and can also sustain frustrating situation better. Special ability is the final step of scrutinizing an individual. There is no point in appointing a candidate who has a poor score in the general aptitude assessment, but manages to score comparatively higher in the special aptitude exam. Special aptitude is required in the particular domain of work in which he has been appointed. But if the person lacks general aptitude, he will be unfit in most of the training sessions, and hence will not be able to learn wholesomely what is taught.
Although aptitude is the inborn potential of an individual, it can be influenced to a greatest extent by stressful situations and stressful people around. Stressful situations make it difficult to learn, especially in case of emergency conditions, it is difficult for processing information. But in such cases the former is the most important thing to do in order to have reasonable responses, to act accordingly. The jobs which require judgement taking and decision making under stressful conditions, are given such aptitude tests which are stress inducing. This is the most effective way to check whether a person is able to perform appreciably, under stressful conditions. However there are strong potential implications of such tests in the recruitment and selection procedures of big industrial organisations. In these situations not only a person’s ability to perform proficiently under stressful situations is assessed, but also the cognitive flexibility of the person is judged.
Psychological tests aim at giving a careful view of the behaviours which can directly affect the risk of acquiring certain lifestyle related diseases like cancer, acquired immune deficiency syndrome and various cardiovascular illnesses. Since mind and body are important determinants of health and illness, the special field of behavioural medicine has come up with a special combination of behavioural as well as my medical knowledge. This is effectively used for the prevention and treatment of disorders ordinary thought of as being within the domain of medicines. Mind and body is a complex and combined phenomena. Every physical illness has a psychological cause and simultaneously, a psychological illness will definitely have a physical consequence. There had been tremendous growth in the field of health psychology as well as the behavioural medicine since the latter came into being.
Earlier it was thought that any bodily illness does not have a psychological back drop. But nowadays it is believed that there are psychological and social factors which influence the development of illness and it had been ignored by the biomedical models do far. This made psychological tests equal important as physical tests, before selecting a candidate.
