{"id":1734,"date":"2012-03-07T13:01:48","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T19:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/blog\/?p=1734"},"modified":"2012-03-07T13:19:29","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T19:19:29","slug":"just-how-stressed-are-missionaries-and-what-can-we-do-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/blog\/2012\/just-how-stressed-are-missionaries-and-what-can-we-do-about-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Just how Stressed are Missionaries (and what can we do about it)?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was just reading about stress levels in missionary life.<\/strong>  Now, you may have heard of the Holmes-Rahe Scale, which is one way health professionals measure stress in people’s lives.  The idea is that a certain number of life events can build up the level of stress until it gets dangerous.<\/p>\n

Some of these might be the death of a family member, a child leaving home, trouble with the boss, change in social activities, a vacation, or marriage.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to analyze the pros and cons of the scale, but it does say something about our lives and our ability to cope and react to change.<\/p>\n

Back in 1999, Drs Lois and Larry Dodds (of Heartstream Resources<\/a>) were studying the levels of stress on the mission field, using a modified version of the Holmes-Rahe Scale.<\/p>\n

In Holmes and Rahe’s original study, they found that if you reached a level of 200 on the scale in a year, the cumulative stress would have consequences for some time to come.<\/b>  In fact, they found that 50% of those who reached this level were hospitalized within two years.  The reasons included heart attack, diabetes, cancer, and other severe illness.<\/p>\n

If ever the level reached 300, the person was almost certain to end up in the hospital within two years.<\/p>\n

So frankly, you don’t want to have that much change and transition in your life.<\/p>\n

So, the Dodds wanted to find out what the typical missionary went through.  As you might have guessed, the news wasn’t good.<\/p>\n

The typical missionary had not just peaking levels above 300 – they had sustained<\/i> levels over 300 – – – year after year.<\/p>\n

The typical missionary, in fact, had double<\/i> that level – 600<\/i> on the scale<\/b>!<\/p>\n

Admittedly, the missionaries in the original study were Americans in Latin America, so we’re not in the category.  Well, not exactly.<\/p>\n

\"Stress<\/center>
The other bad news was that missionaries in their first term had levels that peaked at 900<\/b><\/i>.<\/p>\n

These numbers are truly mind-boggling.<\/p>\n

The recommendations of the Dodds?  Here’s a summary.<\/p>\n