ABSTRACT
Health psychology is a broad church, but one of fairly modern construction. According to J. D. Matarazzo health psychology encompasses the total sum of the contributions that the discipline of psychology, the science of human behaviour and experience, has to make to the matter of physical health and well-being. The American physiologist, Walter Cannon was among the first to use the term stress in a non-engineering context, and clearly regarded it as a disturbing force, something which upset the person’s equilibrium, disrupted the usual balance. However, unlike cataclysmic events, personal stressors happen to fewer people at any one time. Some individuals may simply be predisposed to suffer disruption to specific biological systems in the face of stress. Stress can exert an influence at a behavioural level. Occupational stress is not only associated with subjectively reported levels of ill-health and symptomatology, but is also a predictor of objectively diagnosed illness and disease.
