PSY 0010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Adrenal Gland, Pituitary Gland
Document Summary
Health psychology: the subfield of psychology concerned with the ways psychological factors influence the causes and treatment of physical illness and maintenance of health. Stressors: specific events or chronic pressures that place demands on a person or threaten the person"s well-being. Stress: the physical and psychological response to internal or external stressors. Chronic stressors: sources of stress that occur continuously or repeatedly. When people are less stressed out, they tend to have better immune and mental health response. Seyle"s: general adaptation syndrome (gas): phase 1: alarm reaction, phase 2: resistance (cope with stressor, phase 3: exhaustion, don"t want to get to exhaustion phase because may be too late to save everything. The interpretation of a stimulus as stressful or not is called primary appraisal. Determining whether the stressor is something you can handle/have control or not is called secondary appraisal. The body responds differently to a threat (negative appraisal) than a challenge (positive appraisal)
