ABSTRACT
Behavioral medicine research over the past several years has identified a number of psychosocial characteristics that affect the development and course of a wide range of life-threatening illnesses. Main focus here is on the differential impact of these psychosocial risk factors, biobehavioral mechanisms of pathogenesis, and interventions on the development and course of illness across the adult life cycle. Psychosocial risk factors appear to affect biobehavioral characteristics in ways that vary across the adult life span, as with other approaches to increasing our understanding of the role of psychosocial factors in health and disease, application of the tools of cellular-molecular biology will also benefit from a life-span, aging perspective. Although it cannot be doubted that genetic influences play an important role, it is also very clear that adverse early experiences have the potential to increase levels of psychosocial and biobehavioral characteristics that can damage health.
