Advances in the Conceptualization of the Stress Process:
Essays in Honor of Leonard I. Pearlin

Advances in the Conceptualization of the Stress Process:
Essays in Honor of Leonard I. Pearlin

emotions

In 1981, Leonard Pearlin and his colleagues published an article that would radically shift the sociological study of mental health from an emphasis on psychiatric
disorder to a focus on social structure and its consequences for stress and psychological distress. Pearlin et al. (1981) proposed a deceptively simple conceptual
model that has now influenced sociological inquiry for almost three decades. With
his characteristic penchant for reconsidering and elaborating his own ideas, Pearlin
has revisited the stress process model periodically over the years (Pearlin 1989,
1999; Pearlin et al. 2005; Pearlin and Skaff 1996). One of the consequences of this
continued theoretical elaboration of the stress process has been the development of
a sociological model of stress that embraces the complexity of social life. Another
consequence is that the stress process has continued to stimulate a host of empirical
investigations in the sociology of mental health. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to
suggest that the stress process paradigm has been primarily responsible for the
growth and sustenance of sociological research on stress and mental health.

Edited by William R. Avison, Carol S. Aneshensel
Scott Schieman, Blair Wheaton

www.springer.com

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

2010

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