6 things researchers want you to know about stress

APA’s latest Stress in America™ poll revealed that 77% of respondents reported the future of our nation as a significant source of stress in their lives, followed by the economy (73%) and the 2024 U.S. presidential election (69%).

The continued prevalence and severity of stress has made it a critical area of research for psychologists, who’ve conducted hundreds of investigations on the topic over the years. Their work has helped uncover the wide-ranging sources and consequences of stress—and identify buffers and solutions to this universal, but unequal, experience.

These are some of the important things they’ve found.

While stress can seem like a mental and emotional experience, its effects on the body are well-documented. We’ve all felt how short-term stress, like being startled, can make the heart race. And ongoing stress can accumulate, causing inflammation, wearing on the immune system, and overexposing the body to stress hormones like cortisol. As a result, people with chronic stress are at increased risk of a host of ailments including digestive issues, heart disease, weight gain, and stroke.

“It’s very important to see the mind and body as one,” said Rosalind S. Dorlen, PsyD, ABPP, a clinical psychologist in New Jersey.

Stress can be particularly insidious for people who appear to have persevered. For example, Northwestern University psychology professors Edith Chen, PhDopens in new window, and Greg Miller, PhDopens in new window, found that low-income students of color who were “psychologically successful,” or who displayed a strong sense of self-control and persistence, aged more quickly on the cellular level—a predictor of chronic health problems and even early death.

In other words, success can take a “hidden toll” on some people’s health, Chen said. That doesn’t mean people from marginalized communities shouldn’t strive—but rather that they need more support to help prevent stress from doing physical damage.

Similarly, just because someone’s survived a stressful or even traumatic experience doesn’t mean their bodies will bounce back right away or once the event is over, Chen said. “Many studies have documented links between stressful life experiences in childhood and increased risk of diseases such as cardiovascular disease many years later.”

In fact, in a 2022 meta-analysis of 187 studies, Chen and Miller found that early-life stressors were linked to inflammationopens in new window, and that these negative health effects seemed to compound into adulthood.

“It’s important to acknowledge that life is not fair,” Kathryn Grant, PhDopens in new window, a psychology professor at DePaul College of Science and Health, said. “Some people experience a lot more stressful life experiences than others.” So, it’s important that we all help carry each other’s burdens—and work together as a society to make things more fair, she added.

One universal aspect of stress, however, is that positive social support works to buffer it. Research by the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionopens in new window shows that strong social bonds can protect against stress-related physical and mental illnesses like heart disease and depression, cutting your risk of early death by 50%.

But recruiting that support can be easier said than done. In this year’s Stress in America survey, two-thirds of adults said they could’ve used more emotional support in the past year, and over half wished they had someone to turn to for advice.

“Connect with people, experience nature, go for a walk, reach out to a friend, volunteer,” said Dorlen, who has documented how people, to their detriment, seem more reclusive since the pandemicopens in new window. “There are things people can do to mitigate the stressful environment we’re living in.”

Without social support and under massive stressors, people may have to rely on less-optimal coping strategies until they get into a safer environment or garner more support, Grant has found.

“If you’re trying to fix something that’s uncontrollable, whether it’s your parents splitting up or violence in your community or police brutality, it’s important to try something else,” like distraction, she said. “In our work, we even found that avoidance—which is the worst coping strategy in general—is maybe what’s called foropens in new window in situations where you literally have no control and there’s no other option.”

Stress isn’t all bad. In APA’s survey, 73% of adults said they can still get things done when they are feeling stress, and 59% say they can get over stress quickly. “We do need some stress in order to develop as humans to our full capacity, to learn how to handle challenges,” Grant said.

Some work suggests that as many as 70% of trauma survivors may experience posttraumatic growthopens in new window, with coping strategies like sharing negative emotions, ruminating, and having a more agreeable personality making growth—not only despair—more likelyopens in new window.

“Posttraumatic growth is what our great religions and philosophies and cultural practices and wise grandmothers have taught us about: You can’t run through sorrow, you’ve gotta walk through it,” Grant said. “It’s those big things where we are taken down emotionally—and we do come out the other side and we grow.”