Abstract
For hundreds of years, concepts of mental illness have stipulated that it is the result of remote and immediate causes (e.g., Battie, p. 93) or, in more modern terms, of predisposing and precipitating factors. The immediate or precipitating causes consist of events and conditions that we now label “stressful.” In this chapter we will summarize the physiological background for the concept of stress that has been adopted and adapted by psychiatry, look at early studies on stress that began during World War II, and then review the ongoing series of investigations on health and disease in normal populations and the studies of life events and their relationship to illness.
Can the scientific study of stress help us to formulate a precise program of conduct? Can it teach us the wisdom to live a rich and meaningful life which satisfies our needs for self-expression and yet is not marred or cut short by the stresses of senseless struggles? —H. Selye 1
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© 1978 Plenum Publishing Corporation
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Schwab, J.J., Schwab, M.E. (1978). Stress and Life Events. In: Sociocultural Roots of Mental Illness. Topics in General Psychiatry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2433-1_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2433-1_15
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