PESHAWAR: Experts at a training workshop have called for employing techniques to cope with stress.
Provincial Health Services Academy had arranged a training workshop on stress management for the staff of the public health paramedical institutes and nursing colleges.
Dr Ali Ahsan Mufti, an associate professor of Psychiatry at the Jinnah Medical College, Peshawar and consultant psychiatrist at the Ibadat Hospital, and Zarqa Sehar, a psychologist at of the Horizons organisation, were the resource persons.
The participants, 30 in number, were doctors, IT personnel and vice-principals of the colleges and institutes affiliated with the PHSA.
PHSA Director General Dr Abdul Waheed said that the training was aimed at coping with the situations the staff came across while performing official duties as these affected their mental health.
“Stressful conditions often lead people to anxiety, stress and tension. This training has been arranged in a bid to enable the staff to cope with such situations,” said PHSA chief who thanked the resource persons for the activity.
Dr Ali Ahsan Mufti session was interactive in nature as he encouraged the participants to describe the stressful circumstances they faced at the work places.
He said stress could be managed only after its exact nature was identified. While defining stress, he believed that stress was deemed useful only when it was not frequent as that helped the people to ensure the maximum productivity of their work. But it is dangerous for your mental and physical health if it is persistent and present all the time,” he explained.
Dr Ali Ahsan Mufti said stress was of two types — acute and chronic. He said that chronic stress was a major issue. “It is caused by extreme conditions such as business loss, divorce or serious medical conditions,” pointed out the expert.
But he said it had been noted that the people get worried even after facing acute stress which is not caused by extreme conditions and is less severe in nature.
“You may suffer from acute stress in conditions such as power and gas loadshedding, the Uninterrupted Power Supply system in your house goes out of order, geyser becomes dysfunctional or you are late for work. There are people who get stressed even if tea spills on their clothes by accident. These types of the stress are not permanent and may not be present next year when the situation improves,” he elaborated while citing examples.
Dr Ali Ahsan Mufti said such little sources of stress accumulated in our brain and released a steroid hormone in our body — Cortisol.” This activates an action in our body which is called fight and flight. It shortens the arteries in our bodies which brings us closer to diseases such as diabetes, blood pressure, heart ailments and brain diseases , and especially the paralysis is on the top of all,” he went on to add.
He advised the participants to focus on acute stress that leaves you worried about small issues and causes irritability in future. “Try to understand the emotions and change the behavior that you developed because of these emotions. That will save you from suffering from chronic stress,” he added.
Dr Ali Ahsan Mufti talked about the workplace stress and said that needed to be addressed as well. “The people are finding it difficult to manage time at the workplace and that is also a factor for the stress,” he said.
The session of psychologist Zarq Sehar was about stress coping techniques. She talked of various techniques such as exercises, psychotherapies and called for employing them to come out of the situation.
She dwelt at deep breathing and progressive muscle exercises. “The nine muscles of the body from feet to neck could be put to exercise for a few seconds each which can relax our bodies”, she said while involving the participants in the practice.
The participants felt better after going through the exercise. There was a question and answer session at the end.
