Stress and Health最新文献

Positive emotions can buffer stress-related negative emotions; however, it remains unclear whether such protective benefits extend to middle-aged and older adult caregivers of family members with dementia, a population particularly vulnerable to stress and its health consequences. This secondary analysis of laboratory data from a parent clinical trial (R01AG049764) examined the role of sustaining positive affect in buffering the effects of stress-related emotional reactivity on subsequent negative mood. This study recruited 192 cognitively healthy, middle-aged, and older adults who were dementia caregivers (mean age = 68.14) reported high stress and/or caregiver burden. During a laboratory session, emotional reactivity to an acute stressor (a math and working memory task) was assessed using changes in valence and arousal from the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) before and after the stressor. Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) was completed 10 min before and 40 min after stressor task. Hierarchical regression models tested whether the changes of positive affect across the session moderated associations between SAM valence/arousal reactivity to the stressor and later negative mood. As hypothesised, greater negative valence and arousal reactivity to acute stressor were each associated with higher negative mood later. Among caregivers with less decline in positive affect across session, associations between valence/arousal reactivity and later negative mood were weakened. Our findings support the undoing hypothesis, demonstrating that maintaining positive affect mitigates the impact of emotional reactivity on negative mood. This suggested that interventions fostering sustained positive emotions may be a promising strategy to enhance caregivers' stress adaptation and promote healthier ageing.

As COVID-19 transitions to a more manageable phase, it remains unclear whether its impact on mental health has similarly eased among cancer survivors. This longitudinal study tracked how the levels of stress and isolation experienced by breast cancer survivors (BCS) of different racial/ethnic groups have changed as the pandemic evolved. BCS enroled in the Chicago Multiethnic Epidemiologic Breast Cancer Cohort were surveyed between July and September of 2020, 2021, and 2022. An 11-item isolation/stress score was repeatedly measured in each survey. Mixed-effects linear regression models were used to analyse changes in the isolation/stress scores over time across different racial/ethnic groups and to identify the socioeconomic factors associated with the racial disparities observed. In total, 1899 BCS responded (response rate: 62.8%), of whom 69% were White and 24% Black. The median time from diagnosis to first survey was 5.1 years (IQR: 2.3-9.2). The isolation/stress score decreased continuously for White BCS (P-trend < 0.001), but only began declining for Black BCS in the last wave of survey. Black BCS had significantly higher isolation/stress scores in 2021 and 2022 compared to Whites (both p < 0.01). The racial differences became insignificant after adjusting for certain socioeconomic factors. Notably, BCS who were single, on Medicaid, without a high school degree, or with annual household income less than $35,000 had significantly higher isolation/stress scores (all p < 0.05). The findings remained consistent in sensitivity analysis using inverse probability weighting to account for non-response. Our findings suggested that the levels of stress and isolation of BCS did not improve equally across different racial/ethnic groups as the pandemic subsided. This may be associated with disparities in socioeconomic factors like insurance coverage, education level, income level and family composition. Understanding these barriers and challenges is crucial for developing targeted interventions and support systems for vulnerable populations as we recover from the pandemic and prepare for future health challenges.

Successfully managing physical discomfort and stress during exercise is essential for fostering resilience and a sense of accomplishment. Previous research suggests that individuals vary in their ability to cope with exercise-induced stress, and repeated exposure to stressors may enhance stress management skills. This study aims to investigate how demographic, psychological, and physiological baseline characteristics influence psychological states during moderate- and high-intensity exercise. Thirty-one healthy participants completed two randomized conditions: a 6-min cycling task alone or the same task preceded by a cold-pressor test. Self-reported perceptual and affective responses and heart rate variability were measured throughout each condition. Random Forest and Gradient-Boosting Regressors predicted psychological states. Baseline attention emerged as a key determinant of attentional focus at both intensities, whereas higher BMI and age aligned with elevated stress and pain. A high-tolerance profile mitigated stress and arousal during the high-intensity phase of the exercise trial while boosting positive states such as affect and dominance. Preference played a dual role, intensifying both positive experiences (affect, dominance) and discomfort (stress, pain). Notably, during the high-intensity exercise phase, greater cold-water stress exposure was associated with higher arousal and affect, as well as lower perceived pain at the end of this phase. These findings highlight the complex interplay among psychological and physiological factors in shaping the exercise experience. While individual baseline characteristics influenced responses to exercise stress, exposure to a prior stressor modulated perceptual and affective states, particularly under high-intensity conditions. This study provides insight into the mechanisms underlying stress adaptation in physically demanding contexts.

Dependency and self-criticism are two dimensions of personality vulnerability to depression, whereas efficacy is a dimension of personality resilience. The aim of this study was to examine the unique role of these personality dimensions in adaptation following a diagnosis of breast cancer, while controlling for the potentially confounding role of symptoms of depression and anxiety. Three adaptation outcomes were examined: Functioning, symptomatic load, and fatigue. Patients residing in Germany, diagnosed with breast cancer and comorbid depression, participated in a Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT) testing Supportive-Expressive Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (SEP; N = 78)) versus Treatment as Usual (TAU; N = 79). Assessments were made pre-treatment, at termination, and at 6-month follow-up. Analyses were conducted via General Linear Modelling (GLM). Pretreatment self-criticism prospectively predicted a rank-order decrease in functioning and a rank order increase in symptomatic load and fatigue. Dependency predicted an increase in breast symptoms. No effects were found for efficacy. Self-criticism may complicate adaptation to breast cancer. Implications for early detection and illness management are discussed.

This two-phased, mixed methods study develops our understanding of how knowledge, education and awareness about workplace health phenomena is utilized by experts and applied to their own working lives, through a study that explores how stress is transferred and applied in the management of one's own experience of stress. Phase one gained quantitative data from a sample of 118 stress experts across 18 countries, and phase two used qualitative data from life histories interviews and focus groups with 14 stress experts who had also participated in Phase 1. Phase one found that stress experts experience less occupational stress than a norm group. The number of years experts have been researching stress does not influence the stress-wellbeing relationship. Instead, the greater the belief in their expertise influence, the better their wellbeing, and this effect is independent of the stressors they experience. Phase two built sequentially on this to explore experts' reflections regarding the management of their own stress and the influence of their expert knowledge. Narrative thematic analysis was undertaken to provide discursive insights that captured appraisal of learning and framing of stress experiences. We provide conceptual and practical contributions to further our understanding about how expert status in health impacts outcomes and how this wider learning has theoretical and practical impacts. We show how stress beliefs impact upon behaviors, emotions and cognition. We conclude that awareness and knowledge in itself is not always powerful enough to shape outcomes, and our data evidences how spirals of learning interact with environment and context over time through rich narratives that chart reflection on the development and maintenance of expert status.

Para-suicidal behaviours and self-harm are commonly observed in mental health institutions, with women inpatients being particularly at risk. Little research has looked at characteristics of women engaging in self-harmful conduct beyond diagnostic and socio-demographic information. The current study investigated occurrences of self-harm over time in a large sample of women housed in forensic mental health units in the province of Ontario, Canada. Background and clinical information was obtained from staff ratings on the Resident Assessment Instrument-Mental Health at admission and every 3 months afterwards for an approximately 2-year time period. Latent class mixed models identified two distinct profiles, the first one (77.4% of sample) characterised by a low or intermittent use of self-harm, the second (22.6% of sample) showing a stable elevated risk profile. Women in the at-risk group tended to be younger, showed increased signs of subjective distress and greater occurrence of adverse life events in their history. Psychiatric diagnosis in itself was not a valid predictor of the stability of self-harm for this sample. These findings highlight the importance of addressing both clinical and stress-related distal vulnerability factors in the background of institutionalised women who engage in self-harm on a stable basis.

Hair cortisol concentration (HCC) has been theorized to reflect chronic stress, and maternal and infant HCC may be correlated due to shared genetic, physiological, behavioural, and environmental factors, such as stressful life circumstances. The current study examines HCC as a retrospective indicator of hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis activity in mothers and infants in the context of a major ecological stressor, the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we will compare HCC across two cohorts of mothers and their infants at 6 months postpartum. One cohort was recruited before the COVID-19 pandemic (N = 154; 77 mothers, 77 infants) and another cohort was recruited during the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns in the United States (N = 120; 60 mothers, 60 infants). Next, we will apply machine learning to identify indicators of psychological stress that best predict maternal and infant HCC across these two cohorts. Our set of predictors will include pre- and postpartum measures of maternal perceived stress, parenting stress, and depressive symptoms. Finally, we will test for within-dyad covariation in mother-infant HCC and investigate whether covariation changes with respect to mothers' psychological stress or their experience of the pandemic. Our findings will inform research on hair cortisol as a measure of psychological stress across the peripartum window, particularly in the context of large-scale stressors.

Results concerning memory performance in older adults with persistent-depression versus other depressive states (i.e., no-depression, past-depression and current-depression) are disparate. This study examined if persistent-depression is linked with impaired memory (measured by recall), and whether this link is moderated by one's feeling older or younger (subjective age). The study used data from waves 5 and 6 of SHARE-Israel (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe), collected in 2013 and 2015. This representative sample focuses on adults aged 50 and above (N = 1254, mean age = 68.4 ± 9.02). Each wave assessed depression, immediate and delayed recall, fluency and numeracy; subjective age was assessed only at 2015. The main moderation effect was analysed with a hierarchical regression analysis. Memory impairments in the persistent-depression group were evident only for those feeling older. There were no effects of subjective age on fluency and numeracy tasks. Limitations include usage of self-report measures to assess depression, as well as applying a minimal inter-wave duration (2 years) to assess persistent depression. Results are aligned with a resource-stress account of subjective which claims that one's subjective age refelcts a ratio of resoucres-to-stress. Implications suggest that challenges of ageing in the shadow of depression can be compounded by feeling older, that memory (vs. other cognitive tasks) may be uniquely linked with subjective age, and that feeling older is a potential risk factor for impaired memory in persistent-depression. The importance of possible interventions aimed at lowering subjective age are mentioned.

Acute social stress has been associated with increased immune system activation. However, less is known about whether non-social acute stressors also impact the immune response. In addition, most studies examine stressors that contain multiple characteristics (e.g., social, unpredictable) that could contribute to an increased immune response, but few studies have attempted to disentangle these factors. Finally, few studies have examined whether simultaneous changes in affect are associated with changes in the immune response. The present study used a between-subjects design to examine immune system activation, via changes in salivary cytokines interleukin-6 (IL-6), IL-8, IL-1β, and tumour necrosis factor-α, in response to predictable and unpredictable electric shock. A multimodal assessment of changes in defencive motivation (startle reflex), attention (event-related potential probe N100, P300), and self-reported affect were evaluated to confirm the effectiveness of the threat manipulation. As expected, results indicated that the threat manipulation enhanced defencive motivation, attention, and self-reported affect. Across all participants, both predictable and unpredictable threat increased IL-8 but decreased IL-6. Greater changes in self-reported negative affect were associated with greater increases in the overall immune response. The present study suggests that acute non-social stress enhances immune system activation, particularly in those who experience greater changes in negative affect.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with long-lasting and multifaceted consequences for mental health. Despite established dose-response effects of ACEs on mental health, the specificity of ACE pattern effects remains understudied, especially on executive function. This study aims to explore how specific patterns of ACEs, beyond just cumulative scores, differentially impact emotional symptoms, personality and cognitive function. This study recruited 2515 college students from several universities in northern China. Demographic characteristics, depression, anxiety, borderline personality traits, and executive function (Wisconsin Card Sort Test) were assessed. Latent class analysis was used to identify patterns of ACEs. Data were analysed using χ²-test, ANCOVA, and multivariate linear regression methods. Pattern-oriented and cumulative-oriented approaches were compared to predict the effects of ACEs. Three distinct patterns of ACEs were identified: low adversity (LA), multiple adversity (MA), and family environment adversity (FA). FA with the highest number of ACEs was uniquely linked to executive function impairments, while both MA and cumulative ACEs significantly predicted higher anxiety, depression, and borderline personality traits. The pattern-oriented method was more sensitive to capturing the diverse outcomes of executive function impairment than cumulative scores. Our findings highlight the importance of moving beyond cumulative scores and considering specific ACEs patterns to understand their differential impact on mental health. Identifying FA as a distinct pattern with specific consequences for executive function offers valuable insights into developing targeted prevention strategies tailored to specific risk profiles.