Stress facing Hong Kong teachers and students is a collective problem we cannot ignore
- Anson Au says though stress is often dismissed as an individual problem, studies on its characteristics show it is a huge public health danger. Stress builds up silently, induces destructive emotions and behaviour, and can even change genes
Stress among the most vulnerable in our society has not received sufficient attention from government authorities as it is largely seen as an individual problem of coping, a natural part of life that one has to overcome as part of our repertoire of “soft skills”. But multidisciplinary health research, including my own, tells us that rising levels of stress, especially among children, is actually a public health problem because of the four characteristics we’ve discovered about stress.
First, being stressed is and can become genetic. An innovative field called epigenetics has shed light on the “nature versus nurture” debate by showing that genetics and health consequences are shaped by both. A prominent article published in Nature, the world’s foremost scientific journal, shows that the health behaviour, practices and consequences we develop (“nurture”) actually become built into our genes.
Some early evidence of this comes from addiction studies dealing with alcohol and tobacco abuse, which showed that addictions were passed down. More recently, scientists are discovering that the stress we experience functions in the same manner. Stress changes our genes to make us more predisposed to being stressed. Just as important, this stress tendency can be passed down to the next generation.