Stress & Health Lab

Welcome to the University of Louisville Stress & Health Lab, headed by Professor Tamara Newton.

What is stress? Stress is a process. It unfolds as we interact with the world around us, especially when demands overload our capacity to manage them. Although we all respond to stress differently, many of us experience stress as a feeling: overwhelmed, out of control, or irritable. But stress is more than a feeling. Stress is psychophysiological—it affects mind and body, and sometimes our mental and physical health.^1-3

Stressors, or events with the potential to cause stress, are common and varied. They can be infrequent occurrences (missing a flight), or daily hassles (traffic congestion), or even events that challenge and benefit us—called eustress (starting a new job). In contrast, other stressors threaten our physical or psychological safety. These are often referred to as traumatic stressors. 

A major research focus of the University of Louisville Stress & Health Lab is stress and trauma in prior intimate relationships. This type of stress is highly varied from person to person. For example, it can involve conflict and disagreement, verbal aggression, psychological control, or physical aggression, as either individual or co-occurring experiences in a relationship. It can be infrequent, episodic, or chronic, and it can occur during a relationship or after it ends.

Our research in this area is focused on post-relationship health. It is geared toward developing a more personalized understanding of connections between prior intimate partner stress/trauma and current and future health by:

1) identifying unique patterns of intimate partner stress/trauma

2) utilizing these patterns to bring the health effects of intimate partner stress/trauma—including longer-term age-related health effects—into clearer focus

3) discovering the psychophysiological inner workings that explain these health effects and that can be targeted to protect and improve the health of those who have experienced intimate partner stress/trauma

¹Lazarus, R. S. & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. Springer.

²Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24, 385-396.

³Epel, E. S., Crosswell, A. D., Mayer, S. E., Prather, A. A., Slavich, G. M., Puterman, E., & Mendes, W. B. (2018). More than a feeling: A unified view of stress measurement for population science. Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 49, 146-169.