Review of "Stress Survival Guide"

This little self-help book on stress was originally published in the UK in 1999, and it has some characteristics of British popular culture.  It uses humor with some funny pictures and it is for a general readership: author Jit Gill keeps the level of writing very simple and straightforward.  Rather than give a lot of psychological theory and experimental data, Gill devotes most of the book to the different kinds of things that cause stress and gives list of ideas to help to avoid or solve problems.  For example, it has just over a page on shopping, explaining that shopping can be stressful, especially when you have to return items.  In the "Stressbusters" section that accompanies each chapter, it recommends that you write out menus a week in advance and plan your shopping around that.  It recommends shopping at a time when the shops are not crowded, and suggests trying out shopping on the Internet.  Obviously this does not give any profound insight into the consumer society and it is not even likely to provide much help to people who don't like shopping, but possibly the suggestions may help someone.  The recommendations are very elementary and are at a similar level to those one sees on TV news shows.  On the other hand, the book does avoid jargon and its ideas are very practical and it is possible that it might help someone who has never previously considered that his or her problems might be stress-related or who have no clue about how to deal with them.

 

© 2004 Christian Perring. All rights reserved.

 

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.