Stress: Influences and Determinants of Psychopathology: History
View Latest Version
Please note this is an old version of this entry, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Subjects: Neurosciences
Contributor:
Inês Pereira-Figueiredo
,
Eduardo H. L. Umeoka

The stress response is a natural physiological reaction of the organism, elicited to maintain the internal environment and evoke adaptive behaviors, ultimately leading to survival. However, at the turn of the century, stress-related disorders gained increasing significance. The aim of entry is to explore the fundamental question of when the stress system changes from a beneficial to a detrimental system, contributing to a higher risk of the development of disorders and/or diseases. To develop context, here, we explore the different concepts of stress and reveal the complexities, perspectives, and multiple relationships between the neurochemistry, cerebral functional network, and associated pathologies. According to the literature, the stress response affects nearly every biological system through the close interactions between the physiological, nervous, endocrine, and immune systems when faced with a real or perceived threat. Considering today’s challenging times, where people are facing multiple unavoidable adversities in their lives and a level of uncertainty never before seen, this review emphasizes the importance of understanding the potential consequences of being unable to cope with stressful events. Susceptibility and resilience to stress have gained recognition as important areas of study. The literature presented here enhances our understanding and identifies the causes of various psychopathologies, mental health conditions, disabilities, and even mortality that are closely linked to vulnerability to stress. Experimental studies from recent decades have demonstrated the many factors affecting our ability to cope with stress, including differences between individuals due to their genetic background, epigenetic regulation, gender, and early-life experiences. Finally, there is an urgent need to change the paradigm of modern lifestyles as a potential strategy to prevent the spread of the “health epidemic of the 21st century”, which is stress. Therefore, we acknowledge different approaches to enhance resilience, focusing on perception, tolerance, and positive lifestyle behaviors.

  • stress response
  • defense mechanism
  • stress and health
  • neurobiological pathways
  • allostatic load
In today’s world, the term “stress” is widely used and often misunderstood. Stress is traditionally referred to as a state of mental or emotional strain caused by physiological arousal or negative emotions [1][2], but this has not always been the case.
The concept of stress is relatively old. It is derived from the Latin stringere, which means to squeeze, tie, or cause tension. During the 18th century, the notion of stress shifted from being linked to solely individual emotional consequences to being viewed as the cause of such reactions [3]. This shift in perspective allowed for a more thorough understanding of the concept, and at the beginning of the 20th century, the physiologist Walter Cannon introduced the term stress for the first time in medicine. Cannon made a compilation of visceral adaptive responses to different noxious stimuli. This compilation, which was compiled in the Harvard University laboratories, described the bodily changes that occurred in conjunction with painful insults, such as hunger, cold, hard exercise, or strong emotions. Cannon proposed the stress response to be the “adaptation of the organism to cope with emergencies” and characterized it as a nonspecific and generalized reaction, a state of alarm, which prepares the organism for a potential escape or attack, the “fight-or-flight” response [4]. Some years later, Cannon also introduced the concept of “homeostasis”, an inspiration based on the idea of Claude Bernard in his Introduction à la médecine experimentale (1865), which perceived that the preservation of life was critically dependent on maintaining physiological systems in equilibrium in the face of a changing environment [5]. Both concepts, “homeostasis” and “fight-or-flight response”, were fundamental to the foundation of stress research, suggesting that such a state of “alarm” was the key to explaining what happened to an organism facing an emergency and to recover the state of equilibrium.
The general characteristics of the stress response were defined some years later by Hans Selye, an endocrinologist who, as a student, observed that patients suffering from different diseases often showed similar symptoms that could constitute a single syndrome. Selye hypothesized a non-specific response of the body to stress, emphasizing that identical pathologies would result from any demand, and named it “General Adaptation Syndrome” [6]. Not all scientists agreed with Selye’s proposal from the beginning, and subsequent studies have shown the opposite, that is, the existence of different neuroendocrine responses to exposure to different stressors. While Selye spent his entire career working on physical stressors (e.g., pain, heat or cold), other academics understood that some stress factors can be quite different and induced by internal processes (e.g., anxiety). Pacak and his group presented an alternative model, a “primitive specificity” in the stress response [7], according to which each type of stress would have a neurochemical “signature” with quantitatively and perhaps qualitatively distinct central and peripheral mechanisms. These alterations would occur, not as isolated matters, but as a function of the physiological and behavioral changes and even of the experiences lived by each individual [8].
A few years later, Richard Lazarus attributed meaning to the individual’s environment, and together with Folkman, changed the concept of stress to “the relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised as personally significant and as taxing or exceeding resources for coping” [9], emphasizing, therefore, that it is neither the individual nor the environment alone that produces stress but a complex transaction between the two. Their definition formed the foundation of stress and coping theory, conceptualizing it as “the cognitive and behavioral efforts of an individual to manage the internal and external demands encountered during a specific stressful situation”. This idea was later simplified by endocrinologists Bruce McEwen and Eliot Stellar, who in 1993 proposed a term for the stress response as a process of “allostasis” [8], which literally means “to achieve stability through alteration” and for which the adaptation process was named “allostatic load” or “allostatic overload” [10][11][12]. According to these authors, this concept of allostasis could be more biologically precise than the definition of stress [12]. However, it did not facilitate its comprehension, and the scientific community kept the concepts of stress, stressor, and the stress response to be used and accepted.
It is now widely accepted that stress is a critical factor in many aspects of human life, with devastating effects on our emotional and physical health. Based on this recognition, the World Health Organization (WHO) has labeled stress the “health epidemic of the 21st century” [13]. Stress-related mental illnesses have progressively increased in recent decades, and it is estimated that over 75% of young students and adults suffer, at least at some point in their lives, from stress or anxiety disorders [14]. The Global Organization for Stress reported that stress is now the primary health concern among high school students [15] and that 80% of employers and employees feel stress at work.
In contemporary societies, there is an ever-increasing expectation placed upon individuals to attain a level of perfection and success, largely attributed to the influence of social media and work overload. This often leads to work–life imbalances, which can negatively impact both family and social relationships [16][17]. Furthermore, in the past few years, there have been several sudden, uncontrollable, and unprecedented crises that have occurred one after the other in quick succession. The negative effects of these exceptional crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, unexpected wars, and natural disasters, have been severe, affecting everyone at the same time [18]. These crises impacted the lives of people of all ages, and they have been a source stress, leading to forced displacement from home, isolation, uncertainty, and economic or job insecurity. Several studies demonstrated the high prevalence rates of stress-related disorders, anxiety and depression, and the increased rates of morbidity, mental illness, and suicide [18][19]. The correlation between stress and psychiatric illness is strong, stronger than with any physical or medical illness. This correlation will be the focus of our manuscript.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/encyclopedia4020066

References

  1. Esch, T.; Stefano, G.B. The neurobiology of stress management. Neuro Endocrinol. Lett. 2010, 31, 19–39.
  2. Karatsoreos, I.N. Stress: Common themes toward the next frontier. Front. Neuroendocr. 2018, 49, 3–7.
  3. González, B.G.; Escobar, A. Neuroanatomía del estrés. Rev. Mex. Neuroci. 2002, 3, 273–282.
  4. Landis, C. Walter B. Cannon. Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage. (2nd ed., revised and enlarged.) New York: Appleton, 1929. Pp. xvi+404. Pedagog. Semin. J. Genet. Psychol. 1930, 38, 527–531.
  5. Cannon, W.B. Stresses and Strains of Homeostasis. Am. J. Med. Sci. 1935, 189, 13–14.
  6. Selye, H. The Stress of Life; McGraw-Hill: New York, NY, USA, 1956.
  7. Pacak, K.; Palkovits, M.; Yadid, G.; Kvetnansky, R.; Kopin, I.J.; Goldstein, D.S. Heterogeneous neurochemical responses to different stressors: A test of Selye’s doctrine of nonspecificity. Am. J. Physiol. 1998, 275, 1247–1255.
  8. McEwen, B.S.; Stellar, E. Stress and the individual. Mechanisms leading to disease. Arch. Intern. Med. 1993, 153, 2093–2101.
  9. Lazarus, R.S.; Folkman, S. Stress, Appraisal and Coping; Springer: New York, NY, USA, 1984.
  10. McEwen, B.S. Central effects of stress hormones in health and disease: Understanding the protective and damaging effects of stress and stress mediators. Eur. J. Pharmacol. 2008, 583, 174–185.
  11. Goldstein, D.S.; Kopin, I.J. Evolution of concepts of stress. Stress 2007, 10, 109–120.
  12. Guidi, J.; Lucente, M.; Sonino, N.; Fava, G.A. Allostatic Load and Its Impact on Health: A Systematic Review. Psychother. Psychosom. 2021, 90, 11–27.
  13. World Health Organization. The World Health Report: 2001: Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope; World Health Organization: Geneva, Switzerland, 2001; Available online: https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/42390 (accessed on 16 June 2024).
  14. Mustafa, M. Sources of Stress and Coping Strategies Among College Students in Ladakh. Int. J. Indian Psychol. 2024, 12, 1339–1349.
  15. Díez, M.; Jiménez-Iglesias, A.; Paniagua, C.; García-Moya, I. The Role of Perfectionism and Parental Expectations in the School Stress and Health Complaints of Secondary School Students. Youth Soc. 2023, 56, 885–906.
  16. Salleh, M.R. Life event, stress and illness. Malays. J. Med. Sci. 2008, 15, 9–18.
  17. Kurtuluş, E.; Yıldırım Kurtuluş, H.; Birel, S.; Batmaz, H. The effect of social support on work-life balance: The role of psychological well-being. Int. J. Contemp. Educ. Res. 2023, 10, 239–249.
  18. Limone, P.; Toto, G.A.; Messina, G. Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war on stress and anxiety in students: A systematic review. Front. Psychiatry 2022, 13, 1081013.
  19. Pais-Ribeiro, J.; Ferreira-Valente, A.; Jarego, M.; Sánchez-Rodríguez, E.; Miró, J. COVID-19 Pandemic in Portugal: Psychosocial and Health-Related Factors Associated with Psychological Discomfort. Int. Environ. Res. Public. Health 2022, 19, 3494.
More
© Text is available under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
This entry is offline, you can click here to edit this entry!
Video Production Service
Feedback