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Social Stress

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Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging

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Synonyms

Interpersonal stress or conflict; Psychosocial stress; Societal stress

Definitions

Lazarus (1966) suggested that stress is the outcome of a person’s inability to respond adequately to demands. More specifically, stress occurs when a person does not have adequate resources to respond to overwhelming demands (Lazarus and Folkman 1984; Palmer 1989). Stress is also defined as the emotional, psychological, and/or physiological response to a challenge, whether real or perceived (McEwen 2000; Pryce and Fuchs 2017; Selye 1955). We can define social stress as a person’s inability to respond adequately to overwhelming social demands or social stressors. Social stress in the aging population, therefore, may be defined in part as a response in older adults to an external challenge or stimuli (i.e., stressors) of social nature that may jeopardize their sense of self or sense of social standing or belonging in a relationship, within a group, or within the larger community (Juth and...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of North Texas Health Science Center, Fort Worth, TX, USA

    Uyen-Sa D. T. Nguyen

  2. Boston VA Research Institute, Inc., Boston, MA, USA

    Lien Quach

  3. Department of Gerontology, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA

    Lien Quach

  4. Boston College School of Social Work, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

    Thanh V. Tran

Authors
  1. Uyen-Sa D. T. Nguyen
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  2. Lien Quach
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  3. Thanh V. Tran
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thanh V. Tran .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Population Division, UN Dept of Economic Social Affairs Population Division, New York, NY, USA

    Danan Gu

  2. Department of Population Health Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA

    Matthew E. Dupre

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Joonmo Son

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Nguyen, US.D.T., Quach, L., Tran, T.V. (2020). Social Stress. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_513-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_513-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

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