Teaching and Learning Guide for Stress and Health: A Structural and Functional Analysis of Chronic Stress

Abstract

Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7/7 (2013): 502–506, 10.1111/spc3.12034 Teaching and Learning Guide for Stress and Health: A Structural and Functional Analysis of Chronic Stress Matthew J. Zawadzki and Joshua M. Smyth Pennsylvania State University This guide accompanies the following article: Smyth, J. M., Zawadzki, M. J., & Gerin, W. (2013). Stress and health: A structural and functional analysis of chronic stress. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7, 217–227. doi: 10.1111/spc3.12020. Author’s Introduction It is widely believed that “stress” is bad for health, especially stress that is considered “chronic”. Yet, defining precisely what is meant by chronic has largely been absent from theoretical and empirical examinations of stress. This article provides working definitions of acute and chronic stress, discusses how chronic stress can take different forms, and focuses on delineating the conditions that tend to give rise to chronic stress. As part of this discussion, this article considers the role that various features of the environment, and how the environment is perceived, contribute to the chronicity of stress. In addition, it discusses the important role that engaging in perseverative cognitions (such as ruminating or worrying) has in leading a person to experience stress too often and for too long. More specifically, it describes how perseverative cognitions can interact with each of the conditions that give rise to chronic stress, thus exacerbating the amount (and impact) of chronic stress the person is experiencing. One take-home message is that there may not be just one “kind” of chronic stress; rather, chronic stress may arise from a range of contributing sources and may have different shapes and forms. Extending this logic, the article concludes with a discussion of how interventions to reduce stress may benefit from ideographically tailoring treatment to the type(s) of chronic stress an individual is experiencing. Author Recommends Baum, A., O’Keefe, M. K., & Davidson, L. M. (1990). Acute stressors and chronic responses: The case of traumatic stress. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 20, 1643–1654. doi: 10.1111/j. 1559-1816.1990.tb01499.x Baum and colleagues describe three different ways to categorize the duration of a stress response: duration of the physical stressor, the duration of perception of the stressor as a threat, and the persistence of the response to the stressor. These factors are then discussed in terms of how singular events can cause extended physiological responding beyond the stressor being present and what would constitute a typical time of recovery. This work is drawn upon to consider the different factors that give rise to chronic stress. Brosschot, J. F., Gerin, W., & Thayer, J. F. (2006). The perseverative cognition hypothesis: A review of worry, prolonged stress-related physiological activation, and health. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 60, 113–124. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2005.06.074 © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd