[Stress reactivity and affective psychopathology in health care workers].

While the etiology of the affective disorders remain unknown, most believe that interactions between genetic and environmental factors are critical. Stress has been implicated as an important factor related to the onset and progression of affective disorders. Characteristics rendering individuals more or less vulnerable to stress are very important to elucidate and will be relevant to understanding the pathophysiology of affective disorders. Stress reactivity could be one of these individual characteristics since the results of the present paper show a statistically significant correlation between stress reactivity and the affective psychopathology observed.