ABSTRACT

H. Selye saw the stress reaction as an adaptive syndrome of the organism in response to external stressors. While the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) is intended to buttress an organism's resistance to a particular stressor, it also necessarily alters the physiological balance that prevailed before the stressor appeared. An organism can respond to the presence of a stressor by direct defense or by tolerance. This dual action of the stress response is theorized to result in crossed resistance or crossed sensitization to additional stressors. The idea that stress is a purely biological response has been challenged by J. W. Mason, who asserted that a single biological response to a wide variety of stimuli is difficult to explain on a physiological basis. Stress is a response, both psychological and biological, that is related to illness according to certain patterns, as predicted by the GAS or other theories.