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Social Stress

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Handbook of the Sociology of Mental Health

Part of the book series: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research ((HSSR))

Abstract

Interest in stress continues unabated. Whether we take the publication of Holmes and Rahe’s life event inventory (1967) or Selye’s The Stress of Life (1956) as the point of demarcation, it is clear that a quarter- to half-century later, we are still fascinated by this elusive yet powerful concept. As a point of reference for this chapter, I searched Sociofile from 1990 through the early months of 1997 to detect any recent trends in publications on stress. There were 2,446 articles and books published on stress in this time period. This volume of work is clear evidence of the staying power and the continuing importance of stress as a concept. Furthermore, there is no evidence over these years of a trend one way or the other; in fact, the number of articles and books published per year varied from a low of 321 in 1990 to a high of 385 in 1996, with minor fluctuations in the interim.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5T 1P9 98

    Blair Wheaton

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  1. Blair Wheaton
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095-1772, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Carol S. Aneshensel

  2. Division of Sociomedical Sciences, School of Public Health, Columbia University, 10032, New York, New York, USA

    Jo C. Phelan

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Wheaton, B. (1999). Social Stress. In: Aneshensel, C.S., Phelan, J.C. (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of Mental Health. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-36223-1_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-36223-1_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

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