The Process of Social Stress: Stable, Reciprocal, and Mediating Relationships

Understanding the Links Between Social Support and Physical Health: A Life-Span Perspective With Emphasis on the Separability of Perceived and Received Support

“…For instance, the simple perception of support or high self-esteem can influence adaptation to stress by activating more adaptive appraisal patterns and coping behaviors (e.g., challenge appraisals in the context of more controllable stressors; S. Cohen, 1988). Of particular importance is that perceived social support may also be related to greater proactive coping (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997) and existing longitudinal studies tend to find support to be related to lower stress exposure (McFarlane, Norman, Streiner, & Roy, 1983;Wills & Cleary, 1996). This stress prevention pathway is an understudied but important way by which such psychosocial processes can ultimately influence health outcomes (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997).…”

Stress and Health

“…35, 64, 67, 146, 176) suggest a rather impressive accumulation of evidence. However, a closer examination reveals a most disturbing trend: prospective longitudinal studies, particularly those that involve careful statistical adjust ments for necessary covariates, including prior symptoms or health status, have tended to yield negative findings, showing no effect of stressful life events (e. g. 9,54,55,112,125,151,187). Thus a much more careful reading of the literature will be needed to isolate the trustworthy and replicable findings.…”

Engel’s Pain-Prone Disorder Patient: 25 Years After

“…But caution is urged. Alexander' s [2] effort to link specific disease entities with personality configuration and more recent preoccupation with life events contributing to morbidity furnish examples of two different orders of problems associated with causality in medi cine [23], Susser [35] and Bebbington [3] have documented the complexities and limitations of causal thinking in medicine and psychia try, respectively. The problem is well illus trated by the following example.…”