Engineers, physicists and those with technical expertise in the physical world, understood the nature of stress long before it was popularised as a risk to human health.

Stress was understood to be a force, tension or pressure exerted in the physical world, usually against an object.  No positive or negative connotation applied to stress, but rather it was accepted as an observable and measurable phenomenon.  Buildings, transportation, dams and bridges were designed to withstand a range of inevitable and understood stresses.  Experts calculate, design and construct, knowing that poor physical design results in breakdown sooner or later.  

Stress as a health concept, and more particularly as a mental health concept, appears to have developed from the late 1950’s.  (Some credit Dr Hans Selye as one of the earliest proponents of stress as a critical factor in human health, as early as the 1920’s).   In the most simplistic of terms, too much stress (“stress” referring to adverse life circumstances and/or events) reduced the human body’s capacity to function effectively, resulting in a variety of illnesses and conditions.  

Over time the scope of this concept has expanded to acknowledge the adverse effect of circumstances and events.  Most “baby-boomers” can probably remember first hearing the term “post-traumatic stress disorder” and immediately drawing the conclusion that the sufferer was a “head-case” to start with.  Fortunately, the correlation between life’s trials and the physical and mental health of people is now widely recognised and acknowledged.