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November 23, 2009
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 Holiday Depression And Stress Main Article |  Glossary |  Holiday Depression And Stress Index 

Holiday Depression And Stress Glossary of Terms

The following are health and medical definitions of terms that appear in the Holiday Depression And Stress article.

Anxiety: A feeling of apprehension and fear characterized by physical symptoms such as palpitations , sweating, and feelings of stress . Anxiety disorders are serious medical illnesses that affect approximately 19 million American adults. These disorders fill people's lives with overwhelming anxiety and fear. Unlike the relatively mild, brief anxiety caused by a stressful event such as a business presentation or a first date, anxiety disorders are chronic, relentless, and can grow progressively worse if not treated.
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Depression : An illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts, that affects the way a person eats and sleeps, the way one feels about oneself, and the way one thinks about things. A depressive disorder is not the same as a passing blue mood. It is not a sign of personal weakness or a condition that can be wished away. People with a depressive disease cannot merely "pull themselves together" and get better. Without treatment, symptoms can last for weeks, months, or years. Appropriate treatment, however, can help most people with depression.
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Environment: The sum of the total of the elements, factors and conditions in the surroundings which may have an impact on the development , action or survival of an organism or group of organisms.
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Event: A set of outcomes. Cardiovascular events might include a heart attack and gastrointestinal events a GI bleed. The use of the term "event" in medicine comes from probability theory.

Family: 1. A group of individuals related by blood or marriage or by a feeling of closeness. 2. A biological classification of related plants or animals that is a division below the order and above the genus. 3. A group of genes related in structure and in function that descended from an ancestral gene. 4. A group of gene products similarly related in structure and function and of shared genetic descent. 5. Parents and their children. The most fundamental social group in humans.

Fatigue: A condition characterized by a lessened capacity for work and reduced efficiency of accomplishment, usually accompanied by a feeling of weariness and tiredness. Fatigue can be acute and come on suddenly or chronic and persist.
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Phototherapy: Treatment with light. For example, a newborn with jaundice may be "put under the lights."

SAD: Seasonal affective disorder , a form of depression that tends to occur as the days grow shorter in the fall and winter. It is believed that affected persons react adversely to the decreasing amount of light and the colder temperature as autumn and winter progress.
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Sleep : The body's rest cycle.
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Stress: Forces from the outside world impinging on the individual. Stress is a normal part of life that can help us learn and grow. Conversely, stress can cause us significant problems.
See the entire definition of Stress

Tension: 1) The pressure within a vessel, such as blood pressure: the pressure within the blood vessels. For example, elevated blood pressure is referred to as hypertension. 2) Stress, especially stress that is translated into clenched scalp muscles and bottled-up emotions or anxiety. This is the type of tension blamed for tension headaches.

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 Holiday Depression And Stress Main Article |  Glossary |  Holiday Depression And Stress Index 




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  • Stress - Read about stress symptoms, signs, causes and treatment. Get information on stress management tips, the effects on the body and stress types (teen, job, PTSD).
  • Depression - Read about depression causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and types, including manic depression (bipolar disorder), postpartum depression and clinical depression.
  • Mental Health (Psychology) -

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Holiday Depression and Stress

What is stress?

Stress is simply a fact of nature—forces from the outside world affecting the individual. The individual responds to stress in ways that affect the individual as well as their environment. Hence, all living creatures are in a constant interchange with their surroundings (the ecosystem), both physically and behaviorally. This interplay of forces, or energy, is of course present in the relationships between all matter in the universe, whether it is living (animate) or not living (inanimate). However, there are critical differences in how different living creatures relate to their environment. These differences have far-reaching consequences for survival. Because of the overabundance of stress in our modern lives, we usually think of stress as a negative experience, but from a biological point of view, stress can be a neutral, negative, or positive experience.

In general, stress is related to both external...

Read the Stress article »



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