Stress : perspectives and processes

What is psychological stress? How does it influence health? How can the experiential components of the stress process be examined?

Despite both the recent flourishing of the health psychology field and the long history of stress research, there have been relatively few attempts to examine stress within a broader framework focusing on the role of psychosocial processes in physical and psychological well-being.

This is what Dean Bartlett's accessible and authoritative book aims to achieve.

In the earlier chapters of the book, the nature of both stress and health is outlined and theoretical perspectives that may have a bearing on how stress can cause illness are considered.

The author takes as his starting point the assertion that it is the phenomenological experience of stress that determines the impact of stressful events upon the individual, and he makes a distinctive contribution in terms of an integrated account of the cognitive-phenomenological elements of the stress process.

Stress offers a comprehensive overview of the stress phenomenon from a biopsychosocial perspective.It will be invaluable to students of health psychology and also to professionals including those in the fields of medicine, occupational psychology and the health professions.