STRESS, COPING, AND RESILIENCE: AN INTEGRATED PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Stress affects people at all stages of life and in all situations, making it an unavoidable part of human existence. The study of stress has developed into a multidisciplinary field that includes psychology, neuroscience, medicine, and public health, starting with the physiological reactions that Hans Selye first recorded and continuing with modern neuroscientific understandings of stress mechanisms. Promoting mental health, preventing chronic disease, and improving general well-being all depend on an understanding of how people experience, react to, and recover from stressful events. This chapter offers a thorough analysis of resilience, coping strategies, and stress. It starts by going over the main theoretical frameworks that have influenced how we think about stress, such as the Biopsychosocial Model, the Transactional Model, the General Adaptation Syndrome, the Allostatic Load Model, and the Conservation of Resources Theory. The chapter then looks at the psychological and physiological processes that underlie stress reactions before going over different coping mechanisms and resilience-boosting elements. Throughout, recent empirical research from 2024–2025 is incorporated to offer up-to-date, evidence-based viewpoints on these persistent psychological phenomena.