Essay 13: The History Of Stress.

The History Of Stress.

Being a psychological modern disease, stress is recognised widely among doctors and psychiatrists as a danger to the human mind. However, the history of stress still plays only a minor role in humankind’s knowledge due to the complexity of its roots.

It was not until the 1920s that the term stress was brought to the society. According to Wikipedia, the word stress was derived from the other form of a Middle English word destresse, which rooted via Old French on the Latin word stringere. The word was used among scientists of physics to “refer to the internal distribution of a force exerted on a material body, resulting in strain”. (Wikipedia). Later on, during the 1920s and 1930s, the term began to spread and gain population, as more and more people suffer from it. However it stayed at the extent of biological and psychological fields only, to illustrate the illness caused by constant mental strain.

Walter Cannon was the first to use stress to refer to external factors that disrupted homeotasis. Homeotasis is the main concept of stress, in which most features can be seen from stress appear in homeotasis. According to Cannon, “environmental factors, internal or external stimuli, continually disrupt homeotasis. Factors causing an organism’s condition to diverge too far from homeotasis can be interpreted as stress”.

More and more researches had been drawn to stress since the widespread of it was growing and growing non-stop. The pace of life became faster, the modernisation kept on going and going. And from the late 1960s, academic psychologists began to recognise and adopt the term stress into serious concept. By the time of the late 1970s, stress had already became “the medical area of greatest concern to the general population” (Wikipedia). Much concern was brought up about stress, and people began to be aware of such symptoms. More basic research was called for to address the matter, as to understand thoroughly the condition and how it could affect the balanced health of people.

By the 1990s, stress had become an integral part of modern scientific understanding in terms of physiology and human functioning, not only in Western countries but also in other regions as well. The consequences of stress is now recognised, which include threat to life, serious physical diseases, or psychological integrity. Emotional trauma is one of the most common consequences derived from stress.