Stress Management
Chronic stress can exact a toll upon you — physically, emotionally, and psychologically. "Stress Management," Harvard's in-depth online course, will restore calm and put you in command! This course gives you the tools you need to build a powerful shield to protect yourself from stress and its effects.
Stress can make you see red. It can make you feel blue. And stress can color your physical health in unwelcome ways. It can contribute to heart disease and stroke. It can trigger asthma attacks. It can slow healing. Mounting evidence shows stress can even accelerate aging.
Stress Management will show you how to capably address stress, dispel anger and anxiety, and boost your body’s defenses against stress-related illnesses. You’ll learn a wealth of self-empowering steps that will give you a ready ability to defeat stress.

Mallika Marshall, MD
Mallika Marshall, MD, is an Emmy-award winning journalist and physician who serves as the regular Health Reporter at WBZ-TV in Boston. A practicing physician who is Board Certified in both internal medicine and pediatrics, Marshall serves on staff at Harvard Medical School and practices at the Massachusetts General Hospital's (MGH) Chelsea Urgent Care Clinic and MGH Revere Health Center. Marshall is currently a Contributing Editor for Harvard Health Publications, the publishing division of Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Marshall also has served as the host of “Dr. Mallika Marshall,” a series of health news reports that was nationally syndicated and aired in more than 70 markets, including major cities such as San Francisco, Atlanta, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Houston. A cum laude graduate of Harvard College, Marshall received her medical degree with honors at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. She completed her medical residency at Harvard in internal medicine and pediatrics.

Gregory Fricchione, MD
Gregory Fricchione, MD, has been on faculty at Harvard Medical School (HMS) since 1993. Since July 2002, he has been Associate Chief of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
Dr Fricchione is Director of the Division of Psychiatry and Medicine at MGH and of the MGH Psychosomatic Medicine Fellowship Program and of the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Behavioral Mental Health Service. He supervises a large staff of attending and trainee psychiatrists taking care of the psychiatric problems of medically and surgically ill patients. He is also Director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at MGH, where clinical, animal, and neuroimaging research into the effects of stress and resiliency take place.
Dr. Fricchione received his M.D. from New York University School of Medicine in 1978. He is board-certified in psychiatry and has added qualifications in psychosomatic medicine and geriatric psychiatry. Besides teaching at Harvard Medical School, where he is Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Fricchione has taught in the medical schools at New York University, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Emory University in Atlanta, and the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
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01.Getting Started
- Introduction
- Why We Feel Stress
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02.Impact of Stress
- Introduction
- Stress and Your Health
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03.Different Faces of Stress
- Introduction
- Who Gets Stressed?
- Stress and You
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04.The Relaxation Response
- Introduction
- Understanding the Relaxation Response
- Relaxation Strategies
- Genes and the Relaxation Response
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05.Boosting Your Resilience
- Introduction
- What Is Resilience?
- Strategies for Strengthening Resilience
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06.Key Takeaways: Guide to Stress Relief
- Introduction
- Stress-Relief Strategies to Go
- Quiz
- Before You Exit

As a soon to be graduate student with Harvard Extension School with a focus on Edmund Jacobson’s progressive relaxation, I wish there are more in the course about that. Overall though it was great and very helpful. Lots of great suggestions presented in an easy to digest way. If Harvard Health Publishing does a course exclusively on Relaxation, I would love to help as I’m a reviewer for the International Journal of Stress Management and the creator of the Sport of Relaxation. Please contact me at cob838@g.harvard.edu if you any reviewers wish to connect with me more about those topics.
Sincerely,
Colt Bayard


