Throughout my research paper I seek to investigate the ways in which stress has been individualized in our society, and denied as a social health problem. I begin with an examination of financial stress and they ways in which financial stress "carries over" to other areas of an individual's life. The latter half of my argument focuses on the ways in which we can reform the current available options for stress coping, to better suit the socio-systemic nature of the problem itself. One of the most useful tactics I have encountered comes from the film Default: The Student Loan Documentary and is called "outing yourself" which means exposing the nature of an individuals debt in an effort to rid borrowers of feelings of isolation and helplessness in their debt. This idea is reinforced by Collinge in his book The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History via his establishment of StudentLoanJustice.org.
However, one scholar in particular refutes the idea of stress as a social problem and instead proposes the continued individuation of stress. In their article The Consequences of Financial Stress for Individuals, Families and Societies, authors Davis and Manter cite the importance of a sense of personal mastery, or the belief that one can manage stressful situations, in coping with stress. However, the modifier "personal" in this terms helps us understand that this is a continued form of individual support, and refuses to acknowledge the socio-systemic nature of the stress concept. While some scholars argue that stress needs to be solved through it's societal roots, Davis and Manter argue that a strong sense of personal mastery is important in gaining immediate control of the stress problem for individuals, as oppossed to waiting for a successful social movement to overrun loan institutions.
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