Recent research on environmental stress is reviewed with emphasis on human subjects and on psychopathology. Theoretical and methodological issues are considered with reference to the need for increased attention to stress in clinical research. A new brief interview procedure for measuring recent and current environmental stress is described. It has been used with recently released mental hospital patients and qualified informants in a longitudinal follow-up study. Despite the provisional status of the stress inquiry, it yielded promising early results in discriminating between patients who were later rehospitalized and those who continued living in the community.