An MD graduate of the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Dr. Robert Kohn is a psychiatrist who focuses on geriatric psychiatry and treatment for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Dr. Robert Kohn's research includes assessing the relationship between psychosocial stressors and mental health outcomes.

In the context of psychology, the two major stressors are manageable and traumatic. Manageable stressors are not severe and are often easy to cope with through strategies such as meditation, exercise, and social support. A typical example of a manageable stressor is job loss. When a person loses their job, they may immediately experience emotional stress, which often improves over time without leading to mental disorders.

The job loss experience may improve the ability to handle a subsequent job loss, a phenomenon called direct tolerance. Cross-tolerance, which refers to coping effectively with a different type of stress, is also possible. Cross-tolerance happens when an individual develops a coping mechanism that generalizes to similar stressors. For example, a person who has survived a job loss may develop a coping mechanism that helps them handle a divorce. On the other hand, traumatic stressors, such as rape, natural disasters, and combat, are more difficult to cope with and may overwhelm an individual's stress response system, increasing their risk of developing a mental illness upon exposure to another stressor.