“Stress” has come to be used as an explanation of altered psychophysiological states. The American physiologist, Walter Cannon (1935) was among the first to use the term stress in a non-engineering context, and clearly regarded it as a disturbing force, something which upset the person’s equilibrium, disrupted the usual balance.
Stress may be biological (a disturbance in bodily systems), psychological (cognitive and emotional factors involved in the evaluation of a threat), and even social (the disruption of a social unit).
Psychological stress involves interpretation of the meaning of an event and the interpretation of the adequacy of coping resources. In short, the psychological perceptive on stress assumes that stress arises totally out of person’s perceptions of their relationship to their environment.
Psychological stress can be broken down into three categories:
*Harm - A damaging event that has already occurred
*Threat – Feeling stress because apprehensive about the possibility of the negative event
*Challenge – treat as opportunity rather than an occasion for alarm
Psychological stress
