Mandy, a nurse who works at Nurseslabs Rehabilitation Center is assessing a client for recent stressful life events. She recognizes that stressful life events are both:
A. Desirable and growth-promoting
B. Positive and negative
C. Undesirable and harmful
D. Predictable and controllable
Correct Answer: B. Positive and negative
The concept of stressful life events is based on the research of Holmes and Rahe, who found that both positive and negative changes result in stress. Stressful life events, or life event stressors, are undesirable, unscheduled, nonnormative, and/or uncontrollable discrete, observable events with a generally clear onset and offset that usually signify major life changes. Stressful life events have significant negative consequences for both physical and psychological well-being.
Option A: Broadly defined, stressors are events or conditions that threaten the operating integrity of an organism (Wheaton & Montazer, 2010). The concepts of stress and stressor were first introduced by Hans Selye (1956) whose experiments indicated that repeated and prolonged exposure to noxious conditions and stimuli increased susceptibility to disease and illness in laboratory animals.
Option C: Stressful life events are not always undesirable and harmful. The second approach defines stressful events as those that are consensually seen as harmful or threatening (e.g., Brown & Harris 1989, Cohen et al. 2016). Imminence of harm, intensity, duration, and the extent to which an event is objectively uncontrollable are all factors that contribute to the potential magnitude of consensual threat (Lazarus & Folkman 1984, Rabkin & Struening 1976). As mentioned above, although the magnitude of the threat represented by different life events is often thought to be cumulative (e.g., as assumed by stressful life event checklists), there is also evidence that the maximum risk for disease occurs when a single event meets a high criterion for threat (Wethington et al. 1995), with additional events not adding to the total risk.
Option D: Some stressful life events can be predictable and controllable; however, many life events are entirely unpredictable. With some limited exceptions (e.g., natural disasters, accidental deaths of friends or family members), stressful event exposures do not occur at random but instead are influenced by both individual differences in environmental circumstances and psychological characteristics. Personality factors may also be hidden causes of stressor exposure. For example, divorce is more common in those whose personality is characterized by greater neuroticism or lesser conscientiousness and agreeableness (Roberts et al. 2007). In addition, some cognitive styles, such as a tendency to attribute negative events to stable, global, and internal causes, can lead individuals to experience more stressful life events.