Letter: Stress and the limits of understanding

Sir: Paul Fox (Letters, 4 February) suggests that semantics are unimportant in understanding whatever it is we mean by the word 'stress'. We disagree. Researchers and practitioners do not have a shared definition of 'stress'; they use it to refer to quite different phenomena, have few, if any, sound theories to account for its supposed general effects, and perhaps most importantly, appear to have ignored the scientific and practical implications of these problems.

One consequence of this lack of semantic clarity is that 'stress' has become a term which refers to anything bad that happens to us, and anything bad we feel. While, of course, illness should be prevented and the sick and distressed treated, the simple-minded invocation of the notion of 'stress' does not help us to achieve this.

It is true that there is a steadily growing mountain of scientific papers which examine associations between 'stress' and illness. What is less often publicly acknowledged is that much of this evidence is patchy, inconsistent, and inconclusive. However, we do not need conclusive scientific

evidence in order to agree with Tom Mellish (Letters, 5 February) that employers have both a legal and a moral responsibility to

protect their staff from danger-

ous and demanding working

conditions.

Yours faithfully,

ROB BRINER

Department of Occupational

Psychology

Birkbeck College

University of London

SHIRLEY REYNOLDS

Medical Research Council

Social and Applied

Psychology Unit

University of Sheffield

4 February