Stress Health Article

Stress

Disturbance in the physiology of the individual.

Among psychologists and psychiatrists, stress refers to a psychological reaction within the person to events that generate strong emotion that cannot be easily regulated; for other social scientists, the term stress is used to describe a disturbance in the individual's physiology. These two definitions of stress are not identical. For example, a fall from a tree that leads to a broken arm creates physiological changes in a child that would be regarded as stressful, for there is a cascade of biological events that occurs in such an act of harm to the child. However, many children who have had such falls are not necessarily psychologically upset, anxious, or fearful, even though there was a physiological stress reaction.

On the other hand, a child who believes his parent does not like him, experiences rejection from a friend, or is feeling guilt over violating a moral standard will experience unpleasant psychological feelings that disrupt ordinary functioning. That disruption is a result of a psychological stress. This definition of stress need not involve any strong cascade of physiological changes, as occurred in the fall that leads to a broken arm. Nonetheless, psychiatrists and psychologists would say in the second instance that the child was experiencing stress.

A problem with understanding the effects of either physiological or psychological stress more completely is that there are no sensitive techniques to ascertain the private reactions that are occurring in the child's body or mind. Many scientists make the assumption that certain events will produce stress in the child, recognizing that in some cases the event will not be stressful. For example, most sociologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists assume that death of a parent, marital strife, separation and divorce, abuse, rejection by a close friend, and chronic failure in school will create stress in the child. Although this assumption is reasonable there is no one-to-one relationship between the occurrence of those and similar external events and a physiological or psychological reaction of stress within the child.

Hans Selye is credited with introducing the importance of the concept of stress. Selye discovered that if an individual is under chronic physiological stress there are permanent changes that occur in the body leading to a compromised immunity and a reduced resistance to many forms of disease. Thus college students who are stressed during final examination periods will show a lowered resistance to getting colds and other minor infectious diseases.