Is stress triggered by your genes or by your lifestyle? Help the BBC investigate the causes of stress, and get personalized tips for improving your mental wellbeing.
Professor Peter Kinderman, who designed the Big Stress Experiment, explains what he’s hoping to learn about the causes and consequences of stress.
Stress is not a simple condition. There is no single cause. A whole variety of factors, from our genes to our childhood experiences, affect our mental well being.
We can easily study each trigger on its own, but that probably wouldn’t give us the whole picture. It comes as no surprise that people who’ve survived childhood traumas are more likely to have problems later in life. But not everyone who’s had a difficult past will feel the same. What we don’t yet understand is how important the different causes are in relation to each other. Are events in your past more important than events in the last year – or than the way you interact with your friends and family today?
The only way we can unravel such a complex web of causes is by surveying a large number of people. And the best way to do that is by using the internet.
Is stress triggered by your genes or by your lifestyle? Help us investigate the causes of stress, and get personalised tips for improving your mental wellbeing.
- Part of a real science experiment
- Takes just 20 minutes
The stress test
Source: BBC
