This new edition emphasizes the unique contribution of this longstanding text in the integration of mind/body relationships. The concept of stress, as defined and elaborated in Chapter 1, the primary efferent biological mechanisms of the human stress response, as described in Chapter 2, and the link from stress arousal to disease, as defined in Chapter 3, essentially remains the same. However, updates in microanatomy, biochemistry and tomography are added to these chapters. All other chapters will be updated as well, as there has been significant changes in the field over the past eight years.

In 1981, Plenum Press published a text entitled The Nature and Treatment of the Stress Response by Robert Rosenfeld, M. D. , and me. That text attempted to do what no other text from a major publisher had previously attempted, that is, to create a clinically practical guide for the treatment of excessive stress and its arousal-related syndromes-this to be captured between the same covers in combination with a detailed, clinically relevant pedagogy on the neurological and endocrinological foundations of the stress re sponse itself. That volume has enjoyed considerable success having found markets among practicing professionals and clinical students as well. The fields of psychosomatic medicine, health psychology, behavioral medicine, and applied stress research have appreciably expanded their boundaries since the publication of the aforementioned volume. Although remarkably little of the clinical utility of that volume has been eroded with time, it was felt that an updated and more integrative clinical textbook needed to be offered to practicing clinicians and students within clinical rather than simply create a second edition of training programs. Therefore, was made to create a significantly revised the original volume, the decision and expanded volume that would cover many of the same topics as the original volume but would provide a primary emphasis on the treatment of excessive stress and that would employ an integrative phenomenological model to facilitate that end. This present volume entitled A Clinical Guide to the Treatment of the Human Stress Response is the result.

This updated edition covers a range of new topics, including stress and the immune system, post-traumatic stress and crisis intervention, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD), Crisis Management Briefings in response to mass disasters and terrorism, Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM), spirituality and religion as stress management tools, dietary factors and stress, and updated information on psychopharmacologic intervention in the human stress response. It is a comprehensive and accessible guide for students, practitioners, and researchers in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, medicine, nursing, social work, and public health.

This comprehensive update of the now classic text applies the most current findings across disciplines to the treatment of pathogenic human stress arousal. New and revised chapters bring together the art and science of intervention, based in up-to-date neuroscience, starting with an innovative model tracing the stress-to-disease continuum throughout the systems of the human body. The authors detail the spectrum of physiological and psychological treatments for the stress response, including cognitive therapy, neuromuscular relaxation, breathing exercises, nutritional interventions, and pharmacotherapy. They also assess the strengths and limitations of widely-used measures of the stress response and consider the value of personality factors, cultural considerations, and resilience in stress mediation. Included in the coverage: The anatomy and physiology of the human stress response. Advances in neuroscience: implications for stress. Crisis intervention and psychological first aid. Neurophysiological rationale for the use of the relaxation response. Physical exercise and the human stress response. The pharmacological management of stress reactions. Disaster Mental Health Planning. Cultural Awareness and Stress. The Fourth Edition of A Clinical Guide to the Treatment of Human Stress Response offers readers a dual perspective, exceedingly useful in examining the origins of the stress response, and in preventing and treating the response itself. This rich integrative volume will join its predecessors in popularity among practitioners and students across disciplines and specialties.

This new edition emphasizes the unique contribution of this longstanding text in the integration of mind/body relationships. The concept of stress, as defined and elaborated in Chapter 1, the primary efferent biological mechanisms of the human stress response, as described in Chapter 2, and the link from stress arousal to disease, as defined in Chapter 3, essentially remains the same. However, updates in microanatomy, biochemistry and tomography are added to these chapters. All other chapters will be updated as well, as there has been significant changes in the field over the past eight years.

Barely more than twenty years ago the inquiry into the nature and implications of the psychophysiologic stress response seemed to be restricted to laboratory animals. Today, however, scientists from a wide range of disciplines are studying stress and its implications for human health and disease. This may be because our technical ability actually to measure the phenomenon has increased, as has our understanding of human psychophysiology. Just as important, how ever, may be the fact that we have entered a new era of disease. According to Kenneth Pelletier, we have entered upon an era in which stress plays a dominant role in the determination of human disease. Pelletier has stated that up to 90% of all disease may be stress-related. Whether this estimation seems inflated or not, the fact remains that clinicians of all kinds, including physicians, psychologists, physical therapists, social workers, and counselors, are daily being confronted with clients suffering from excessive psychophysiologic stress arousal. This fact has created a need to know more about the stress response and its treatment. Although more and more health-care professionals are directly or indirectly working with clients who manifest excessive stress, there has been no text previously written which attempted to condensE' between the covers of a single volume a practical, clinically compre hensive discussion of what stress is (as best we currently understand it) and how to treat it when it becomes excessive.