We need advice on sleep, it just gets worse and worse

My wife and I have a 10 mo who has struggled to consistently go more than 1-3 hours at a time in his crib since 3 1/2 months.

We’ve been hesitant to sleep train but we’re finally at the point where something really needs to change. She has two hold-out concerns that I’m hoping some people here can help us resolve:

1. Is there any solid evidence that babies actually are less stressed once sleep trained and not just signaling less? The thought of our kid being stressed but now alone in it is very difficult to sit with.

2. If we have a limit from the outset that we will cap the crying at 1 hour/night for 1 week (because that's what my wife feels able to commit to), are we dooming ourselves to fail? Will our kid learn he just has to make it to the hour mark and not learn to self-soothe (or whatever they are actually learning in this process...)?