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A new study published in Psychiatry Research looked at whether perceived stress can be linked to enhanced cognitive functioning and a reduced risk for psychopathology.

“Our study tested whether low to moderate levels of perceived stress are associated with benefits in cognitive functions and mental health,” study author Assaf Oshri told us. “We relied on the Hormesis model, which is from the field of toxicology- assuming that not all stress is bad for the organism and that there is a threshold of stress from which stress is bad for you.”

According to a study by the Mental Health Foundation on stress levels, the largest known study of stress levels in the UK, 74 per cent of people surveyed reported being so stressed that they felt unable to cope.

The survey was an online poll conducted with over 4500 participants. As far as age differences, 30 per cent of older people said they never feel overwhelmed and the same held true for seven per cent of young adults.

Over 45 per cent of people surveyed said that while stressed they ate unhealthily or ate too much. Nearly 30 per cent of people surveyed who said they were stressed reported that they had started drinking alcohol or had increased their drinking while over 15 per cent reported they had started or increased smoking.

Over 50 per cent of people surveyed reported that they felt depressed as well as stressed and over 60 per cent reported they felt anxious. Over 35 per cent said they felt lonely. Over 15 per cent of people surveyed said they had self-harmed and over 30 per cent said they had suicidal thoughts.

Reasons for increased stress levels among those surveyed included a friend or relative’s long term health condition (over 35 per cent of adults, 44 per cent of adults over the age of 55), debt (over 20 per cent surveyed), the need to respond to messages instantly (12 per cent), comparing themselves to others (nearly 50 per cent of 18-24 year olds), appearance and body image (36 per cent of women compared to 23 per cent of men), housing worries (32 per cent of 18-24 year olds), and the pressure to succeed (60 per cent of 18-24 year olds).

“I think we tend to think about stress to be linearly related to health and mental health problems, in other words more stress more negative outcomes,” Oshri told us, “but to understand resilience better, we need to find how we sometimes can be strengthened by stress which may help us face future stress.”

The American Psychological Association called stress a “national mental health crisis” caused in large part to stress from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Is stress all bad? Is there a level of stress that is actually good for us? According to a study by Kaufer and UC Berkeley post-doctoral fellow Elizabeth Kirby, acute stress that is short-lived primes the brain for improved performance or keeping it more alert.

Their study using rats showed that their mental performed improved after undergoing significant, but brief stressful events. These stressful events caused stem cells in the rat’s brains to create new nerve cells.

Their study found that stress hormones help an animal adapt. Could the same be said for humans?

Researchers for the current study used a large data set from the Human Connectome Study with over 1200 participants.

“The results of the study supported our hypotheses,” Oshri told us. “This means that we should pay attention to stress and its severity so we can then evaluate which one hurts us and which one may offer us an opportunity to get stronger. Human resilience is an essential process in development and evolution which we should keep on studying it.”