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General Adaptation Syndrome (Selye)

🩺 Nursing & Health By CampusDown Wiki Editorial Team Last updated
Quick answer: Selye's general adaptation syndrome says the body answers any stressor through alarm, resistance and exhaustion, and prolonged stress leads to illness.
Contents
  1. 1. Background
  2. 2. Three stages
  3. 3. Extensions and critique
  4. 4. References

Background

Canadian endocrinologist Hans Selye found that rats exposed to many different noxious agents all showed enlarged adrenals, shrunken thymus and stomach ulcers, which he reported in Nature in 1936. He defined stress as the body's non-specific response to any demand.

Three stages

  • Alarm: the sympathetic system and adrenal medulla release adrenaline for fight or flight; resistance briefly dips (shock).
  • Resistance: cortisol released via the HPA axis helps the body adapt, raising resistance above normal.
  • Exhaustion: with prolonged stress, resources run out and 'diseases of adaptation' such as hypertension, ulcers and weakened immunity appear.

Extensions and critique

Selye later distinguished eustress from distress. Because people perceive the same event differently, Lazarus and Folkman (1984) emphasised cognitive appraisal and coping.

References

  1. Selye, H. (1936). A syndrome produced by diverse nocuous agents. Nature, 138, 32.
  2. Selye, H. (1956). The Stress of Life. McGraw-Hill.
  3. Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. Springer.

Reports and materials that use this theory (Korean)

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This article was last updated on October 15, 2026. It is based on widely recognized original works and textbooks; when citing it in a paper, please check the original sources listed in the references.