Chapter 6 Homeostasis, Stress, and Adaption
coping: the cognitive and behavioral strategies used to manage the stressors that tax a person's resources
stress: a disruptive condition that occurs in response to adverse influences from the internal or external
environments
p.79 Stress is a state produced by a change in the environment that is perceived as challenging, threatening,
or damaging to a person's dynamic balance or equilibrium... The change or stimulus that evokes this state is the stressor...
A person appraises and copes with changing situations. The desired goal is adaptation or adjustment to the change so that
the person is again in equilibrium and has the energy and ability to meet new demands. This is the process of coping with
the stress, a compensatory process that has physiologic and psychological components.
Adaptation is a constant, ongoing process that requires a change in structure, function, or behavior
so that a person is better suited to the environment; it involves an interaction between the person and the environment.
p.79-80 Each person has varying abilities to cope or respond. As new challenges are met, this ability to
cope and adapt can change, thereby providing the person with a wide range of adaptive ability. Adaptation occurs throughout
the lifespan as the person encounters many developmental and situational challenges, especially related to health and illness.
p.80 Each person operates at a certain level of adaption and regularly encounters a certain amount of change.
Such change is expected... A stressor can upset this equilibrium. A stressor may be defined as an internal or external event
or situation that creates the potential for physiologic, emotional, cognitive, or behavioral changes in an individual.
p.80 After recognizing a stressor, a person consciously or unconsciously reacts to manage the situation.
This is termed the mediating process.
p.81 Coping consists of the cognitive and behavioral efforts made to manage the specific external or internal
demands that tax a person's resources... Problem-focused coping aims to make direct changes in the environment so that the
situation can be managed more effectively... Even if the situation is viewed as challenging or beneficial, coping efforts
may be required to develop and sustain the challenge and to ward off any threats. In harmful of threatening situations, successful
coping reduces or eliminates the source of stress
p.81 The physiologic response to a stressor... is a protective and adaptive mechanism to maintain the homeostatic
balance of the body.
p.82 Selye emphasized that stress is the nonspecific response common to all stressors
