Stress Generation: A Special Section

Abstract

Hammen (1991) demonstrated that depressed women experienced higher levels of nonrandom (dependent) stressful life events compared to comparison groups of medically ill, bipolar, and healthy women. Research on depression has shifted from examining diathesis-stress models where individuals are passive recipients of their environment to a transactional model in which individuals both contribute to and react to their environment. In the last two decades, research on stress generation has proliferated that included examination of clinical predictors and enduring vulnerability factors as predictors of stress generation. This special topics issue presents five empirical articles that represent some of the exciting new research in this area and a commentary that highlights the key conceptual issues in stress generation research.