Toxic stress definition

Toxic stress means strong, frequent, or prolonged experience of adversity without adequate support.
Toxic stress means strong, frequent, or prolonged experience of
Toxic stress means a condition in which an individual is in a

Examples of Toxic stress in a sentence

  • Toxic stress plagues our schools and teachers through unreasonable demands, poor work conditions, unrealistic job performance expectations, and minimal supports or resources, which ultimately outpace teachers’ ability to cope and perform (▇▇▇▇ & ▇▇▇, 2007).


More Definitions of Toxic stress

Toxic stress also means that something bad happens, like those events in “tolerable stress”, but where the individual lacks internal resources or external support systems, and, as a result, there is a lack of sense of control that leads to a chronic physiological dysregulation that promotes pathophysiology and results in something called “allostatic load” and “overload”, described below. Lack of control has been one of the defining features of psychological stress that leads to disease (Cohen et al., 2007). As a result, when toxic stress situations are prolonged, mental and physical health disorders develop over time. In this review, we use “stress” as an overall term for the body’s need to adapt to life experiences, particularly those that fall into the categories of “tolerable” and “toxic” stressors that differ in duration, severity, and degree of perceived control leading to some degree of allostatic load or overload.