PSY 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Biofeedback, Stressor, Insomnia

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1101
• Professor: Brenda Baird

Document Summary

In this section, we will explore stress - what it is, how it progresses, and the type of damage it can cause: background. In 1925 a second year medical student named hans selye observed that people suffering from a wide variety of somatic (physical) disorders all seemed to have the same or similar symptoms. For example, many of these people reported: decreased appetite, decreased muscular strength and endurance, and lowered levels of ambition or drive. Selye, unable to find a common disease or disorder to explain these behaviors, called this group of symptoms, the syndrome of just being sick. In addition, he found that these symptoms occurred whenever: the human organism needed to adapt to a changing internal or external environment. This was the first observation and identification that eventually led to the term stressat first, Selye defined stress as, a nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it.