Stressful life events

Abstract

Scientific inquiry into the impact of life stress events on health has been the focus of several clinical investigations (Miller, 1989a,b). At the forefront of today's understanding of stressful events and their impact on the human organism are a variety of theories which argue either that stress lies within the environmental input, that it is couched in the cognitive appraisal; or that stress lies toward the environmental input; or that it is a multivariant, multiprocess system that views no single variable or process as the etiology of psychopathology in the organism. It is seen rather as a complex system of variables that address the environment, the personality of the individual organism, and the impact of the stressful life event on both.