Publisher's Synopsis
INTRODUCTION
Stress:
Stress in the twenty first Millennium? Not some thing new, not any thing unknown, stress has
been experienced since time immemorial, but its toll is higher than ever before, with increasing
complexity in our life style, the level of stress has been rising at a phenomenal rate.- When we
analyse visit to doctors 75 to 90 percent are for stress related problems (Pareek, 1999). The
claims for stress are twice as high as these paid for non stress physical problems injury or
disease. The factors that contribute to stress not only differ between cultures, but also
with in a culture itself; from a sophisticated industrial society to foragers; and from upper
class to lower class with in the same society. Life would be simple indeed if our needs
were automatically gratified. As we know many obstacles, both personal and environmental prevent
this ideal situation. Such obstacles place adjustive demands on individual and can lead to stress.
The term stress has typically been used to refer both to adjustive demands placed on an organism
and to organism's internal biological and psychological responses to such demands. Adjustive
demands are the stressors, the effect they create within an organism is stress and the
efforts to deal with stress are the coping strategies. Separating these constructs is a
somewhat arbitrary action as Neufeld, (1990) has pointed out, stress is a byproduct of poor
or inadequate coping.
Do we know the history of stress as we know about its geography? Like natural
directions (East, West, South and North), stress too has four such directions. Stress is not
something to- avoid; in fact, it is impossible to do so. Complete freedom from stress is death
(Selye, 1983). Selye distinguishes between two basic types of,
