Recovery Post (con't), Post Recovery: The Stress Test!

...the speed and extent of recovery, in addition to reflecting the characteristic of resilience, is a strong indicator of one's health in any given area, or the health of  system, organization, institution...after being tested, under stress, following a strenuous workout...

(Almost) Full Circle: As I have shared here periodically, throughout my four decade professional career as a psychologist, I have been witness to, and participated in, many types of 'management', the first of which was "Stress Management", which eventually got absorbed by "Anger Management". Lately, I have seen the rise of  all kinds of coping strategies and programs targeted at "Anxiety" and its close relative "Sadness", the symptoms of which, if persistent and uninterrupted, can have significantly adverse impact on one's mental and physical health. In other words, your general well-being. More recently in this blog, I have presented a mini series on diagnosis and prognosis, including the idea of recovery. Before I provide the main categories of factors that obfuscate the understanding and treatment of various conditions (PP-Part 4), I am going to briefly return to the topic of "Stress" -- more specifically various forms of the "Stress Test" that we can all relate to and recently experienced, whether we are fully aware of it. Now you will be.

Testing, Stressing: "...involves measuring the heart while undergoing exercise of gradually increasing intensity on a treadmill..." Overheard throughout my career, more so the past year: "Stop this treadmill, I want to get off!". The duration of the standard cardiac stress test is usually 15-30 minutes, whereas the Stress Test we have all experienced (not quite over, can't step off the treadmill quite yet...) has lasted for several months...

Want, Got Resilience? Then "Stress Test Your Organization" as the recent Forbes article cites, in "..becoming digitally unbreakable..." through the following steps which have analogues to our everyday experiences, regardless of where we have been lately: 1) identify what breaks; 2) digitize workflows and knowledge; 3)automate to optimize. Yep, we can relate to how grocery store chains, hospital and health care facilities, and educational formats have been tested to the max, where they have been shown to be broken or flawed, and where technology can come to the rescue...digitize or catastrophize...

Funny Money, not so much: A bank stress test, which became more familiar to us during and shortly after the 2007-2009 financial crisis, are now required periodically by the Consumer Protection Act reforms of 2010: "...while it may be an unwelcome exercise, stress testing can be enlightening for bank managers..." (and ultimately those of us who entrust them with our cash). We have been witness throughout history and the world, including the most recent financial crisis, how cash and checks (probably more in the form of digital deposits and transfers the last 20-30 years) can vanish into cyber space, become 'Monopoly Money', absent such tests and related protections...

Off the Grid, Inviting Disaster: Another system that we all depend on all the time, involves the power grid, including the electrical, natural gas, petroleum products, and, increasingly, solar, wind, and other 'renewables' -- each have their own vulnerabilities and associated 'stress tests'. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a non-profit organization formed in 2006, for example, "...ensures the reliability of the North American bulk power system.." (instrumentally via testing the grid in a range of methods). More recently (2018) the "Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) "...coordinates security and resilience efforts..." and covers a range of systems we all depend on, often take for granted. But behind the scenes there is continuous testing, by both good (i.e., 'friendly hackers' and other security experts, hired to test the grid, digital firewalls, etc.) and bad actors (such as those who attempt to cyber-ransom, which unfortunately has found its way into our everyday vocabulary). Regionally, in the US of A, we witnessed how, even with frequent, sophisticated tests in place, the power grid is vulnerable to the proclivities of mother nature (Texas in February, 2021), and that other critical functions are vulnerable to cyber attacks (Colonial Pipeline past few weeks). From time to time, we all threaten to 'go off the grid', to take a break somewhere where no one knows your name, where you are unreachable, but the grid going down without notice, before you can prepare, is never a good thing. While you were sleeping, others went phishing...

Stress Indexes, Revisited: Finally, to come full circle, I reference many acceptable scales we mental health professionals had access to when "Stress Management" was in vogue and still have use of today, self-rating inventories that allow the respondent to check off various life events and experiences that through research have been empirically demonstrated to have different levels of impact on both mental and physical health, 'stressors' that can be of even an origin generally deemed favorable ("Eustress" as I explained in an earlier post). No doubt an enterprising individual will develop an index emanating from this pandemic, more specific to the 'vicissitudes' we have encountered the past several months (still counting), an index they can credit me with, simply as a footnote. 

Stressed Out, Out into the Future: Only time will tell what the cumulative and various combinations of these same experiences will become manifest in our longer term well-being, both individually and collectively. But what we can be certain of, in the presence of other ongoing uncertainties, is that we have all been tested, in a way quite unlike anything prior. We hope to learn from it.