Stress

Broadly defined, stress is a process that involves a complex interplay among environmental demands, health consequences, and vulnerability and protective factors in individuals and their social environments. Stressors that confront individuals with adaptive demands initiate the stress process. Life stressors are associated with emotional distress and physical illness. Despite the overall association between stressors and adverse emotional and physical outcomes, individuals react to stressors in highly variable ways. Although stressors make some individuals emotionally or physically ill, other individuals remain healthy, and some grow stronger and more resilient after managing stressors successfully. Thus, current approaches to the stress process emphasize the complex interaction among stressors and vulnerability and protective factors, which include coping skills, personality traits, and social-contextual factors.