PS282 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Environmental Hazard
Document Summary
Ongoing environmental conditions that may interact in various life domains. Economic conditions at multiple levels and social/political forces. Distal contextual risk factors tend to be chronic stressors that impact access to resources and accumulation of disadvantage over years and decades. Poverty is biggest risk factor for problematic outcomes. Effects of chronic environmental conditions may be cumulative ex combined effects of poverty, crowding, chronic illness. Aspects of an individual, not generally readily observable. Genetic factors, personality traits ex shyness or optimism, learned cognitive patterns, child maltreatment. May act as stressors or resources/risk or protectical role. Boundary between contextual and personal factors is permeable and fluid. Ex chronic illness is a personal issue but the personal impact is influenced by sociocultural interpretations of the illness, how disabling its considered, and how ppl with it are expected to behave. To handle stressors, individuals often mobilize available resources for coping. Simply having resources available is not enough, a person needs to activate them.
