Stress is part of life and will always be around. The keys to dealing with stress are appropriate control of stressors and management of our physical (physiological) and mental (psychological) responses.

In this regard, some exciting work is being done on early treatment (intervention) during extremely stressful events (such as 9-11). This intervention, called critical incident stress debriefing (CISD), involves discussing the traumatic event as soon as possible after the event.

In fact, CISD can lessen extreme (pathological) reactions to stress and often prevent PTSD in its worst forms. Hopefully, the concepts of CISD can be translated into helpful strategies for managing the more common (normal) types of stress.