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STRESS RESPONSE SYNDROME. By Mardi Jon Horowitz. New York: Jason Aronson, 1976, 366 pp., $15.00.
In writing about his concept of the stress response syndrome Mardi Horowitz has made a welcome contribution to the pschodynamic and therapeutic aspects of brief psychotherapy. In this book he reviews his research experiences of ten years as creator and director of the Stress Research Unit at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco.
In essence the Stress unit is crisis intervention strategy which seeks to defuse the psychopathological consequences that may follow a recent stressful event such as a loss of a limb, an auto accident in which someone is killed, the death of a parent, the suicide of a friend, rape, and the threat of dying through serious illness.
Like emergency medical clinic procedures which aim to save lives and limit the progression of anatomical and physiological pathology due to physically traumatic incidents, the Stress Unit responds to the emergency psychiatric syndrome by seeking to contain emotional and mental decompensation consequent to emotionally traumatic events. The duration of treatment is short term, and the goals are limited to helping the patient to attain some constructive mastery over the initial sequelae of the provocative situation. Where necessary, the individual is referred elsewhere for longer term psychiatric treatment.
The author reviews the inadequacy of the current diagnostic criteria for stress response manifestations and makes a compelling case for the delineation of this syndrome as a valid nosological entity.
The stress response syndrome as elucidated by Horowitz has five phases: the outcry or type of emotional response to the stressful event; denial or emotional numbness as a defense; intrusiveness of