Stress sensitivity in psychopathology: mechanisms and consequences

The special section on "Stress Sensitivity in Psychopathology: Mechanisms and Consequences" presents an array of articles and results across samples of children, adolescents, and adults that are at once exciting for the field and challenging. The articles highlight an empirically and conceptually important topic in psychopathology- the role of stress. For many years, this topic was mainly a focus of depression research but has now widened to include relevance to a variety of forms of psychological disorders, as shown in this special section. In addition to the applications to many different disorders, our field of psychopathology is enriched by highlighting the remarkable range of naturalistic and experimental paradigms for studying stress processes in humans, and to learn about diverse conceptual models. The authors of the articles in this special section have given us much food for thought in their innovative studies, and their work provides fruitful guides for next steps. It is to be hoped that such work points to future integrative and collaborative studies, across levels of analyses, methods, and samples that will further elaborate on the associations between stress and psychopathology, as well as the mechanisms that have relevance to the advancement of knowledge of disorders and their treatment.