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Psychological stress occurs when an individual perceives that environmental demands tax or exceed his or her adaptive capacity. 1 Operationally, studies of psychological stress focus either on the occurrence of environmental events that are consensually judged as taxing one’s ability to cope or on individual responses to events that are indicative of this overload, such as perceived stress and event-elicited negative affect. In this article, the definition of stress excludes psychiatric disorders that may arise as downstream consequences of stressful exposures and also excludes dispositions often linked to stress, such as hostility and type A behavior.