Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Definition of Stress
Assessing Stress
About 90% of all adults report that they have experienced stress
at some time in their lives
Definition of Stress
Stress can be defined as a psychological
and physiological reaction to a real or
perceived threat that requires some
action or resolution
Multiple Meanings of Stress
Stress can be triggered by a real or imaginary
stimulus
Allostatic load:
describes what happens when the same adaptive
system that was designed to protect us actually
tears us apart
Responses to Stress
Stage 2: Perception/Evaluation
Stage 4: Consequences
Stress Management & Prevention: Stages
Five principles of stress
prevention and management
1. Prevention is more effective than management
3. Environmental Disconnect
4. Occupational Stress
Both race and gender stress can start at an early age and can
cause:
low self esteem
alienation
anxiety
A Selected History of Stress
Claude Bernard developed the concept of
internal environment
Charles Darwin theorized that fear and stress
are adaptive mechanisms for survival
Freud developed a theory of psychological
disturbance based on the conscious and
unconscious fears that motivate behavior
A Selected History of Stress
(contd)
Walter Cannon was the first physiologist to begin
talking about stress in the context of emotional
responses