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You need to make the public understand how chronic stresses add up and lead to obesity, cancer, etc. Someone soliciting 500 people at an intersection is someone giving 500 people needless stress. The negative consequences of this are not canceled out by the benefit to the homeless man. Same with a park — a person should be able to walk in one rare beautiful piece of nature without seeing sprawled junk and disheveled tents. The benefit of this stress-free nature exposure is, ironically, protective against the possibility of developing homelessness in the future.
Anyway I would write something like, “we have noticed an uptick in minor trauma and stress responses among our residents, including women and lower income minorities. We have traced this stress response to the individuals who are soliciting money to stressed drivers trying to watch for incoming traffic; this is not just distracting, but it reminds many residents of their own lack of financial stability. In order to safeguard our most at-risk residents from further stress, we are going to make soliciting for money in public illegal. We instead ask everyone to donate to a town-wide fund for our poorest residents. The town will match dollar per every $400 donation. We are also going to ensure that our parks are free from unnecessary stressors.”
Love this. Unfortunately the hierarchy of oppression seems to me unweighted, so because chronic stress ranks beneath poverty, it doesn't matter that 500x chronic stress > 1x homeless. Maybe a clever thought leader could try upgrading solicitation to rape, and since rape still out-oppresses poverty, society could rightfully lock up all the rapists who invade the psychological safe spaces of BIPOC folx.
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Yeah, great answer. Chronic stress kills.
Unfortunately as @Fruck says, our entire worldview, especially the medical establishment, is firmly against chronic stress being an issue. Just take a look at muscular injuries. While many doctors such as John Sarno have done great research and essentially proven that most chronic injuries are psychosomatic, the modern establishment view within medicine is that pretty much all injuries are mechanical, and need to be fixed with surgery. The idea that chronic stress over time leads to emotional issues which lead to physical pain is a massive threat to the current medical system.
There are a lot of researchers, doctors, and therapists doing good work in the chronic pain space, but boy are they fighting an uphill battle. And just imagine trying to tell someone "Yeah well... you didn't really need that shoulder surgery that cost you (or likely other taxpayers) tens of thousands of dollars, but it was probably easier than getting you to do some self-reflection and actually fix your personal problems." It's not exactly a sexy argument to make.
This is a gross oversimplification. The consensus view of pain is the biopsychosocial model.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6067990/#:~:text=The%20biopsychosocial%20model%20of%20pain,that%20reciprocally%20influence%20one%20another.
The thing about Sarno is that his model is pretty much only psycho.
Yes this is the consensus view in chronic pain science - do you think it’s the consensus view among everyday doctors, especially those for specific disorders like carpal tunnel, tennis elbow, tendinitis, etc etc? Hell no.
Most of these doctors haven’t even heard the term biopscyhosocial. I can tell you that confidently because I spent almost ten thousand dollars and got 30+ different opinions from these doctors for my own chronic issues, and only found out about the biopsychosocial model myself. All this less than five years ago.
I even acknowledge that there are doctors doing good work in the chronic pain space, as you discuss. But to call my claim a gross oversimplification is simply not true.
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While I'm no fan of the homeless, I really don't think chronic mental stress can cause SLAP tears.
No idea what SLAP tears are, but hey man the link between mental stress and physical injuries keeps getting validated to impact more and more issues that were previously thought to be mechanical.
Anything that is caused or exacerbated by ‘stress’ is an excellent candidate.
Personal bugbear: Superior Labrum, Anterior to Posterior. The labrum is a bowl of cartilage that provides passive stabilization of the shoulder joint, which in humans is significantly less structurally sound in exchange for a greater movement envelope. The labrum can be torn by heavy exertion at the edges of the envelope or by the proximal head being driven through the labrum, as in holding your arms rigid during a car crash.
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That wouldn't work man, because people can't wrap their heads around cumulative issues. You can't make them understand because to understand that they would have to do a lot more work thinking about shit. If you say "ok take the stress of that guy selling oranges and add it to the stress of the guy wagging his dick at you on the overpass", they check out at the word add every time. "You want me to think about things instead of instantly defaulting to my knee-jerk reaction? Fuck you, this is America!" You have to go the other way, make it easier to think about somehow.
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