Definition
Stress is a hard concept to define precisely, but like obscenity (to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (Jacobellis vs. Ohio. 378 U.S. 184, 197, 1964)), you (sometimes, but perhaps not always) know it when you feel it. For any given system, stress implies a load that challenges the homeostasis and integrity of the system. Stress may be intrinsic to the system, for example, the weight of a suspension bridge’s roadway platform, or extrinsic to the system, such as the effect of hurricanes, earthquakes, or traffic jams loading the bridge. Both intrinsic and extrinsic stressors pose the risk of bridge collapse. Whether a stressor is intrinsic or extrinsic, the system must have a capacity to withstand it in order to maintain structural and/or functional integrity. Thus for a suspension bridge, to continue the example, this capacity is built into the tensile strength of its suspension cables and the mass and strength under compression of the towers and buttresses...
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References and Further Reading
Albus, C. (2010). Psychological and social factors in coronary heart disease. Annals of Medicine, 42, 487–494.
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Leeka, J., Schwartz, B. G., & Kloner, R. A. (2010). Sporting events affect spectators’ cardiovascular mortality: It is not just a game. American Journal of Medicine, 123, 972–977.
Low, C. A., Thurston, R. C., & Matthews, K. A. (2010). Psychosocial factors in the development of heart disease in women: Current research and future directions. Psychosomatic Medicine, 72, 842–854.
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Shapiro, P.A. (2019). Heart Disease and Stress. In: Gellman, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_251-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_251-2
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