General Adaptation Syndrome - Essay Example

General Adaptation Syndrome General Adaptive Syndrome is psychological term on how the body reacts to both short term and long-term stress conditions. A number of stressors in human nature contribute significantly towards influencing the occurrence of stress in an individual. They are usually divided in to three categories including physical stressors, emotional stressors, and mental stressors. Hans Selye, a young medical doctor who realized common symptoms among his patients without any particular physical cause, and therefore, developed this particular theory.

The occurrence was termed as a syndrome considering that the manifestations were dependent on each other most especially in terms of coordination. After a period of investigations, he came to the realization that the actual cause of the problems was stress and therefore, came up with three stages of the adaptive syndrome. The first stage is reaction stage, which is ideally the first response to a stressor, causing an individual to either flee or fight response, positioning the body for any eventual action process.

The second stage in the adaptation is the resistance stage. When a stressor leads to the second phase, the body has to make changes at different levels to ensure that it reduces the stressor levels. The body cats appropriately towards the particular stressor reducing its effects by engaging in an activity that reduces the effects. Such an occurrence leads to the final stage of adaptation, which is exhaustion stage. At this point, the body’s resistance to a particular stressor may reduce or even collapse, because of the loss of the body’s immune system to offer appropriate resistance.

Reduction in immunity could result in heart attacks or even infection for long-term experience of stress in individuals. Stress is an effect of anxiety disorder and therefore, the most appropriate treatment involves stress reduction strategies as the most effective.