Abstract
BackgroundNegative effects of stress have pose one of the major threats to the health and economic well being of individuals independently of age and cultural background. Nevertheless, the term “stress” has been globally used unlinked from scientificevidence-based meaning. The discrepancies between scientific and public stress knowledge are focus of concern and little is know about it. This is relevant since misconceptions about stress may influence the effects of stress-management psychoeducational programs and the development of best practices for interventions. The study aimed to analyze stress knowledge among the Canadian and Brazilian general public and to determine the extent to which scientific and popular views of stress differ between those countries.MethodsWe evaluated 1156 healthy participants between 18 and 88 years of age recruited from Canada (n = 502) and Brazil (n = 654). To assess stress knowledge, a questionnaire composed of questions regarding stress concepts (“stress is bad” versus “stress-free life is good”) and factors capable of triggering the stress response (“novelty, unpredictability, low sense of control and social evaluative threat versus “time pressure,work overload, conflict, unbalance and children”) was used.ResultsBoth Canadian and Brazilian participants showed misconceptions about stress and the factors capable of triggering a stress response. However, the rate of misconceptions was higher in Brazil than in Canada (p < 0.05).ConclusionThese findings suggest a lack of public understanding of stress science and its variance according to a country’s society. Psychoeducational programs and vulnerability of stress-related disorder are discussed.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12888-016-0886-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Negative effects of stress have pose one of the major threats to the health and economic well being of individuals independently of age and cultural background
The National Science Board of the United States revealed that only 40% of Americans know that “the father’s gene determines
Only 16.5% of Americans, on average, closely follow news about health, science and technology, while 48 percentage closely follow news on the weather [1]. These evidence show that there is a lack of an integrated view of scientific knowledge in the general public
Summary
Negative effects of stress have pose one of the major threats to the health and economic well being of individuals independently of age and cultural background. The discrepancies between scientific and public stress knowledge are focus of concern and little is know about it. This is relevant since misconceptions about stress may influence the effects of stress-management psychoeducational programs and the development of best practices for interventions. The National Science Board of the United States revealed that only 40% of Americans know that “the father’s gene determines. These evidence show that there is a lack of an integrated view of scientific knowledge in the general public. People use to link stress to deleterious effects on health and seek to eliminate it from their lives leading to the understanding that stress is essencially harmful whatever the circunstances [3]
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