By Dennis Archambault
We have found ourselves in a new age of anxiety. As the New York Times phrased it: “The killings are happening too often. Bunched too close together. At places you would never imagine. As the long roll call of mass shootings added a prosaic holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif., to its list, a wide swath of America’s populace finds itself engulfed in a collective fear.”
Collective fear, resulting chronic stress, is a condition low income and minority communities have known, more-or-less, as an ongoing condition of life. Not to diminish the anxiety produced by domestic terrorism — regardless of its ideological roots — chronic stress is a social determinant that needs to be considered high in the hierarchy of threats to population health.
Social and public health research have correlated life stress with negative health indications and health inequity. Most recently, “Cumulative Neighborhood Risk of Psychosocial Stress and Alostatic Load in Adolescents,” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3530361/
A 2007 article in the journal Psychiatry, “Social Support and Resilience to Stress,” notes that social support is exceptionally important for maintaining good physical and mental health. Overall, it appears that positive social support of high quality can enhance resilience to stress, help protect against developing trauma-related psychopathology, decrease the functional consequences of trauma-induced disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and reduce medical morbidity and mortality.1http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2921311/
A 2013 article in the journal BMC Public Health poses the question, “Is volunteering a public health intervention?”http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/13/773:
Research has associated volunteering with increased longevity; improved ability to carry out activities of daily living; better health coping mechanisms; adoption of healthy lifestyles; and improved quality of life, social support, interaction, and self-esteem, according to the article. Reductions in depression, stress, hospitalization, pain and psychological distress in volunteers were also reported.”
In the past two decades, American culture has been evolving into more of a virtual society, from the creation of “friends” on social media to creating an online retail economy that has significantly changed the communal shopping experience. This withdrawl from the town square can lead to diminished socialization — just at a time when it’s needed the most.
As the New York Times headline warns, “Fear in the Air, Americans Look Over Their Shoulders,” the social stress that comes from mass anxiety could not only result in paranoia, it could diminish health status on a massive level.
This suggests that efforts should be made to encourage constructive socialization — to create “connectedness” in a fragmented society.
Edge Magazine, this past September, published an essay written by Kathy Parkin on “Connectedness through Volunteering.” http://www.edgemagazine.net/2015/09/connectedness-through-volunteering/. Parkin writes about how she was transformed through the otherwise mundane act of counting and labeling trees for the Portland, Oregon, Parks and Recreation Department. While the project mattered to the recreation department, Parkin noted the greater gain was hers:
“I learned how to cooperate with people I didn’t know, as well as learning about tree identification.” She also volunteers for the county library system, which she says is “a community center for people of all kinds,” a neighborhood community center called “Friendly House,” and delivers groceries to a senior high rise building through a non-profit. “By nature, I am really quite a solitary person, but I love the feeling of being connected with other people in the way that volunteering brings…”
In an age of anxiety, volunteerism may not only fill voids in the social safety net, it could be a way of improving population health.
Dennis Archambault is director of Public Affairs for Authority Health.