ABSTRACT
Contemporary discussions about stress started when the word 'stress' jumped from the engineering field to field of psychology in the 1940s. Life without stress is impossible, but achieving just the right balance between good stress that arouses and stimulates with just the right amount of distress, a state that taxes and challenges but ultimately is not harmful, is a magnificent balancing act. It is much too simple to say that in dementia stress is good or bad; it is more accurate to state definitively that too much or too little stress is bad for everyone irrespective of the labels we place upon each other. Stress compromises brain function and the equipment required to keep the emotions in check becomes most compromised of all and this can lead to the syndrome of 'overload'. A link between stress and the development of dementia has been hypothesised for 30 years or more.
