An important challenge faced by clinical psychiatrists is how to integrate new findings from neurobiology with clinical experience and data from the social sciences, for a better understanding of genetic and neurochemical substrates, personality, traumatic experiences and social events in the etiopathogenesis of mental disorders. A model based on current concepts of stress may help. With this objective in mind, the author reviews the relevant literature and attempts to illustrate the relationship between stress, neurobiology and mental disorder. Also, a brief review of possible causal paths between psychosocial stress and psychiatric morbidity is offered. Finally, the possibility of convergence between both models is proposed