Stress, Stressors and Stress Responses

I. What Is Stress?

Stress is the combination of psychological, physiological, and behavioral reactions that people have in response to events that threaten or challenge them. Stress can be good or bad. Sometimes, stress is helpful, providing people with the extra energy or alertness they need. Stress could give a runner the edge he or she needs to persevere in a marathon, for example. This good kind of stress is called eustress. Unfortunately, stress is often not helpful and can even be harmful when not managed effectively. Stress could make a salesperson buckle under the pressure while trying to make a sales pitch at an important business meeting, for example. Moreover, stress can increase the risk of developing health problems, such as cardiovascular disease and anxiety disorders. This bad kind of stress is called distress, the kind of stress that people usually are referring to when they use the word stress.

A convenient way to think about stress is in terms of stressors and stress responses. Stressors are events that threaten or challenge people. They are the sources of stress, such as having to make decisions, getting married, and natural disasters. Stress responses are psychological, physiological, and behavioral reactions to stressors. Anxiety, depression, concentration difficulties, and muscle tension are all examples of stress responses.

The connection between stressors and stress responses, however, is not as straight forward as it may seem. Mediating processes, for instance, stand in between stressors and stress responses. Whether stressors lead to stress responses depends on mediating processes like how people appraise potential stressors and how well people are able to cope with the negative impact of stressors. Furthermore, a number of moderating factors, such as personality traits and health habits, influence the the links between stressors and stress responses. These mediating processes and moderating factors help determine whether people experience stress-related problems like burnout, mental disorders, and physical illness and are the focus of many stress management techniques that emphasize cognitive-behavioral approaches, relaxation, exercise, diet and nutrition, and medication.

II. Sources of Stress

Stressors, the sources of stress, include three types of events, referred to as daily hassles, major life events, and catastroph...

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...arrying them out—draw on a limited supply of volitional energy that is available inside people. Consequently, if people deplete this resource too much, it is no longer very easy to do what they need to do to handle stress, such

as trying to use coping strategies in response to stressors.

B. Mental Disorders

Mental disorders are the result of a varying combination of sources, one of which being stress. Examples of other sources are as follows:

Chemical imbalances

Inherited characteristics

Early learning experiences

Brain damage

Psychological traits

People sometimes have symptoms of mental disorders, but they usually do not meet the criteria or are not clinically significant, severe enough to necessitate treatment. Before a person can be diagnosed with a mental disorder, his or her problematic thoughts, feelings, and actions must meet the criteria for the mental disorder and must prevent adequate social, occupation, or other forms of functioning.

Stress may play a causal role in a wide variety of mental disorders. Some of the mental disorders in which stress appears to have a causal role are anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and substance-related disorders.