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Who Else Wants to Know the Real Definition of Stress?

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Stress is a state produced by a change in the environment that is perceived as challenging, threatening, or damaging to the person's dynamic balance or equilibrium. The person is, or feels, unable to meet the demands of the new situation.

The change or stimulus that evokes this state is the stressor. The nature of the stressor is variable; an event or change that will produce stress in one person may be neutral for another, and an event that produces stress at one time and place for one person may not do so for the same person at another time and place.

A person appraises and copes with changing situations. The desired goal is adaptation or adjustment to the change so that the person is again in equilibrium and has the energy and ability to meet new demands. This is the process of coping with the stress, a compensatory process with physiological and psychological components.

Adaptation is a constant, ongoing process that requires a change in structure, function, or behavior so that the person is better suited to the environment. It involves interaction between the person and the environment.

The outcome depends on the degree of "fit" between the skills and capacities of the person, the type of social support available, and the various challenges or stressors being confronted.

As such, adaptation is an individual process; each individual has varying abilities to cope or respond. As new challenges are met, this ability to cope and adapt can change, thereby providing the individual with a wide range of adaptive ability.

Adaptation occurs throughout the life span as the individual encounter is to promote adaptation. In situations of health and illness, this goal is realized by optional wellness.

Because both stress and adaptation may exist at different levels of a system, it is possible to study these reactions at the cellular, tissue, and organ levels. Biologists are concerned mainly with subcellular components or with subsystems of the total body.

Behavioral scientists, including many nurse researchers, study stress and adaptation in individuals, families, groups, and societies. They focus on how a group's organizational features are modified to meet the requirements of the social and physical environment in which they exist.

Types of Stressors

Stressors exist in many forms and categories. They may be described as physical, physiological, or psychosocial.

Physical stressors include cold, heat, and chemical agents. Physiological stressors include pain and fatigue. Examples of psychosocial stressors are fear of failing an examination and losing a job. Stressors can also occur as normal life transitions that require some adjustment, such as going from childhood into puberty, getting married, or giving birth.

Stressors have also been classified as:

1. Day-to-day frustrations or hassles, such as being caught in a traffic jam, experiencing computer downtime, and having an argument with a spouse or roommate.

2. Major complex occurrences involving large groups, even entire nations. These includes events of history, such as terrorism and war, which are threatening situations when experienced either directly, in the war zone, or indirectly, as through live news coverage.

3. Stressors that occur less frequently and involve fewer people. This category includes the influence of life events such as death, birth, marriage, divorce, and retirement.

Stress as a Stimulus for Disease

Relating life events to illness, stress can be defined here as a stimulus. It has been a major focus of psychosocial studies. Subsequent research revealed that people under constant stress have a high incidence of psychosomatic disease.

Life events scales have been developed to assign numerical values, called life-changing units, to typical life events. Because the items in the scales reflect events that require a change in a person's life pattern, and stress is defined as an accumulation of changes in one's life that require psychological adaptation, one can theoretically predict the likelihood of illness by checking off the number of recent events and deriving a total score.

Sources of stress for patients have been well researched. People typically experience distress related to alterations in their physical and emotional health status, changes in their level of daily functioning, and decreased social support or the loss of significant others.

Any of these identified variables plus a myriad of other conditions or overwhelming demands are likely to cause ineffective coping, and a lack of necessary coping skills is often a source of additional distress for an individual. When a person endures prolonged or unrelenting suffering, the outcome is frequently the development of a stress-related illness.

Hence, to avoid such problems, it is best to learn how to cope up with stress and release the tension from within.

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