Stress management encompasses techniques intended to equip a person with effective coping mechanisms for dealing with psychological stress, with stress defined as a person's physiological response to an internal or external stimulus that triggers the fight-or-flight response. Stress management is effective when a person utilizes strategies to cope with or alter stressful situations.

   
       In order to develop an effective stress management programme it is first necessary to identify the factors that are central to a person controlling his/her stress, and to identify the intervention methods which effectively target these factors.

   Interpretation of stress focuses on the transaction between people and their external environment . The model conceptualizes stress as a result of how a stressor is appraised and how a person appraises his/her resources to cope with the stressor.

      Subsequent studies of stress in humans by Richard Rahe and others established the view that stress is caused by distinct, measureable life stressors, and further, that these life stressors can be ranked by the median degree of stress they produce .

     
         Stress was traditionally conceptualized to be a result of external insults  beyond the control of those experiencing the stress. More recently, however, it has been argued that external circumstances do not have any intrinsic capacity to produce stress, but instead their effect is mediated by the individual's perceptions, capacities, and understanding.

    
  
   The model proposes that stress can be reduced by helping stressed people change their perceptions of stressors. Levels of stress can be measured. One way is through the use of the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale to rate stressful life events.