What is stress?

Stress accompanies us daily as traumatic events are common in people’s lives. According to a study conducted in 21 countries by the World Health Organization (WHO), 10% of respondents passed through extreme stress situations at some point in life:

• 21,8% of respondents witnessed violence,
• 18,8% were the victims of violence,
• 17,7% were victims of accidents,
• 16,2 % experienced exposure to war,
• 12,5 % experienced serious love trauma.

Light stress may have positive effects. It will help us react quickly when in danger, triggering our fight-or-flight response. At the same time, heightened levels of stress can drastically affect our physical and mental health. However, stress-related problems and disorders have become a common issue. A meta-analysis of post-conflict WHO studies revealed that 15.4% of people reported posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 17.3% reported depression. 

Such conditions have become very common globally. There are many ways to treat stress, but many people from low-income countries, might not have proper access to medical help. PTSD, depression, or other stress-related diseases may be unidentified and stay untreated or, on the contrary, diagnosed in healthy people.

Work-related stress

Some people do not take it seriously when it comes to stress. They do not seek professional help. As an example, we often experience stress at our workplace. In bad management practice, supervisors call elevated amounts of stress a challenge. At the beginning, the employee finds it acceptable and sometimes even motivating to work and learn, depending on available resources and personal characteristics. But at some point excessive pressure becomes unmanageable. Eventually, it leads to stress that can damage business performance & worker health.

A lot of employees can’t cope with elevated levels of stress daily. If they don’t get adequate support from the management, it can affect the work process.

Research shows that these three work arrangements induce greater stress levels:

• Where an employee does not have an ability or knowledge to perform under excessive pressure and work demand,
• Where there is little opportunity to practice any type of control over workload,
• Where the management is not supportive.

In these cases, the companies have to reconsider their relationships with employees and their understanding of how the stress can affect performance at work. Part of the solution could be implementing a system of psychological tests that could help identify specific character traits of an individual. Such tests help to identify if the person fits the office culture and values and can get along with the team and the management.

The psycho-emotional state of the person can be measured with complex diagnostic devices. 

Stress measurement benefits

RANKEL Stress-Scanner is a complex diagnostic device, designed to assess a person’s psycho-emotional state in minutes. It can tell you about the person’s ability to adapt to stress by evaluating his autonomic and neurohumoral regulation.

What are the most common RANKEL Stress-Scanner applications:

• to control the effectiveness of various methods of ongoing therapy,
• to measure the state of the employees with high levels of psycho-emotional burden e.g. pilots, dispatchers, etc.,
• to evaluate the efficacy of the medications manufactured by pharmaceutical companies,
• to perform health screening procedures by family doctors, sports clinics and clubs, physiotherapists, etc.

Analyzing the data collected by RANKEL Stress Scanner

RANKEL Stress Scanner is an advanced complex HRV monitor to measure the patient’s functional state. It can assess the patient’s psycho emotional state by phase analysis and biorhythm mapping.

After collecting and analyzing data, the complex device presents information on the patient’s psycho emotional state in the form of spline maps.Spline maps represent measurements of activity in some parts of the patient’s brain and the whole of the central nervous system.

For example, black and yellow-red represent the decreased activity of the brain, which is often caused by pain, overwork, and stress. Psychoemotional state indicator characterizes how deep the destructive effect of stress is.

The device can also measure the frequency spectrum of the patient’s brain activity. It is obtained by transposing the rhythms of the heart into the frequency range of brain rhythms. The obtained spectrum is divided into bands corresponding to the frequencies of the delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma rhythms. The normal state corresponds to an equal distribution of rhythms over the entire frequency range. The predominance of the delta rhythm indicates pain, increased workload, and stress. 

It is important to mention that the technology used by RANKEL Stress-Scanner is approved by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation as well as the European and the US healthcare commissions. It is allowed to be used for medical purposes. It is very easy to use and can be manipulated by unqualified professionals.