Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology and Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-7076, USA.
Brain Behav Immun. 2019 Jan;75:3-5. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2018.08.011. Epub 2018 Sep 17.
Life stress is central to many contemporary theories of human health and behavior. Despite this fact, numerous conceptual and measurement issues remain unresolved. The present article explores these topics by first summarizing several key definitional and conceptual matters that are important for life stress research. Second, I introduce stressnology, defined herein as the fictitiously named, but otherwise very real and problematic approach to studying life stress exposure that involves measuring only the superficial contours of this very complex construct. Finally, I review some recent methodological advancements that have the potential to move us past primitive approaches to conceptualizing and assessing life stress. Ultimately, although the influence that life stress has on human health and behavior is profound, our understanding of this construct-and how it affects wellbeing, functioning, and development-is still very limited. Using state-of-the-art instruments for assessing life stress exposure, especially across the entire life course, should therefore be a top scientific and clinical priority.
生活压力是许多当代人类健康和行为理论的核心。尽管如此，许多概念和测量问题仍未得到解决。本文通过首先总结生活压力研究中几个重要的定义和概念问题来探讨这些主题。其次，我引入了 stressnology，将其定义为一种虚构的、命名的，但实际上非常真实和存在问题的研究生活压力暴露的方法，这种方法只测量这个非常复杂的结构的表面轮廓。最后，我回顾了一些最近的方法学进展，这些进展有可能使我们超越生活压力概念化和评估的原始方法。最终，尽管生活压力对人类健康和行为的影响是深远的，但我们对这一结构的理解——以及它如何影响幸福感、功能和发展——仍然非常有限。因此，使用评估生活压力暴露的最先进工具，尤其是在整个生命周期内，应该是一个首要的科学和临床优先事项。
