Become a Psychologist

When someone is under chronic stress, it begins to negatively affect his or her physical and mental health. The body’s stress response was not made to be continuously engaged. Many people encounter stress from multiple sources, including work; money, health, and relationship worries; and media overload.

With so many sources of stress, it is difficult to find time to relax and disengage. This is why stress is one of the biggest health problems facing people today.

Chronic Stress

Chronic stress increases the risk of developing health problems including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and a weakened immune system. Chronic stress also affects a person’s mental health. Many studies show a correlation between stress and the development of mood disorders such as anxiety disorders and depression.

According to the American Psychological Association’s latest stress survey, 66 percent of people regularly experience physical symptoms of stress, and 63 percent experience psychological symptoms.

Link between Stress & Mental Health

Although many studies have shown a link between stress and mental health problems, the reason behind this connection has remained unclear. Recent research from the University of California, Berkeley, has discovered new insight into why stress can be so detrimental to a person’s psyche.

Previous research has found physical differences in the brains of people with stress disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and those without. One of the main distinctions is that the ratio of the brain’s white matter to gray matter is higher in those with stress-related mental disorders compared to those without.

People who experience chronic stress have more white matter in some areas of the brain. The UC Berkeley study wanted to find out the underlying reason for this alteration in the brain composition.

Gray Matter

Gray matter in the brain is composed mainly of two types of cells: neurons, which process and store information, and glia, cells that support the neurons.

White matter mostly is composed of axons, which form a network of fibers to connect the neurons. It is called white matter because of the white, fatty “sheath” of myelin coating that insulates the nerves and accelerates the transmission of the signals between the cells.

For this study, the researchers focused on the cells that produce myelin in the brain to see if they could find a connection between stress and the proportion of gray brain matter to white.