[Psychogenic stress: theory, experiment, practice].

Experiments on animals (rodents, beasts, primates) and observation in man have ascertained that psychogenic stress is the most important defensive state of living organisms, which is constantly involved in order to maintain their interaction with external psychogenic factors. Three types of stress should be distinguished, these include normostress, hypostress, and hyperstress. Normostress has definite limits within which optimal responses, which are typical for an individual are realized. Hyperstress develops as a defensive response to extremely strong (extraordinary) stimuli. Hypostress can be observed in the retarded development of self-regulation mechanisms. All three types of stress are provided by a fundamental property of living organisms--the self-regulation mechanism, which realizes the keeping back of normostress constancy, or return of hyper- and hypostress to the normostress status. And only if an extreme deficit of self-regulation mechanisms takes place, hyper(hypo)stress could become a condition for the development of pathology.