Background. Most ofthe available literature and the press more often describe stress, why it occurs, its impact on the body and how to avoid it. The fighting against internal or external factors, also known as stressors, the body accepts it as an alarm and occurs at the moment many changes related to the circulatory, respiratory and muscular work.
Aim. To determine the stress-induced psychological and somatic expressions, peculiarities of their dominance.
Methods and materials. The study used a questionnaire survey, descriptive and comparative method. The data was processed of the statistical analysis. The differences were considered statistically significant if the p-value of the criterion is less than 0.05.
Results. The study analysed three groups of respondents: the first course of the Military Academy trainees, police officers and Utena County industrial workers. The study involved 262 respondents (121 men, 141 women), from 18 to 65 years age. By education 6 respondents had basic education, 68 - secondary, 188 - higher. 162 respondents were married, 70 - unmarried, 30 - divorced. Statistically significant manifested expressions of the psychological stress are difficulty in making decisions and concentrating, inability to finish one task before rushing into another, feeling the target of other people's animosity, reluctance to act in the smallest problems, lack of interest in doing things after returning home from work, waking up in the morning and feeltng tired after an early night. The somatic stress expressions are fre quent indigestion or heartburn, headaches, cramps and muscle spasms, breathlessness without exertion, fainting spells.
Conclusions. With age, the body's adaptability to fight with the stress decreases, which occurs the psychological and somatic stress symptoms. Stress expression depends on the work specifics, such as working in physical labour more often notice the stress-induced somatic symptoms, working in psychological labour - the psychological symptoms.
