ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief description of the historical development of the concept, an introduction to the various ways in which stress is conceptualized, and a model of social stress that attempts to capture its causes, mediating effects, and outcomes. The term “stress” is used in almost countless ways. Early in the twentieth century, Walter Cannon, an American physiologist, used the term homeostasis to describe a state in which the body’s physiological processes are in balance and are properly coordinated. He identified many highly specific physiological changes made by the body in response to hunger, thirst, extreme cold, pain, and intense emotions. Historical records indicate that in the fourteenth century the term was equated with hardship and affliction, and in nineteenth-century medicine, stress was cited as a cause of ill health, as many diseases were attributed by physicians to conditions of “melancholia,” “grief,” or “despair.”
