Author(s)

Marilda Novaes Lipp, Louis Mario Novaes Lipp

Institute of Psychology and Stress Control, São Paulo, Brazil.

Stress has been identified as a major risk factor for mental illness and its prevalence is rising globally, not only harming the workforce but also translating into an enormous cost to the labor organizations. To prevent and treat stress-related consequences, it is necessary to learn how to identify its symptoms and their severity. The present paper constitutes a proposal for a four-stage model of the stress process, adding a phase to Selye’s three-phase model. The model identifies an intermediary phase between the resistance and exhaustion stages of the Selye model, possessing characteristics distinct from the other stages. This newly identified stage has been named the Near-exhaustion phase. Stress symptoms from a sample of 37,454 adult subjects were grouped according to the four proposed phases, which may be used as an aid for the diagnosis of stress. It is suggested that a four-phase stress process should replace Selye’s three-phase model.

Stress, Three-Phase Stage Model, Stress Four-Phase Model

Lipp, M. and Lipp, L. (2019) Proposal for a Four-Phase Stress Model. Psychology, 10, 1435-1443. doi: 10.4236/psych.2019.1011094.