Anxiety Stress and Coping最新文献

Background: Imagery is a common technique used to regulate stress and its associated emotions. Although imagery ability is proposed to influence imagery's effectiveness and be associated with stress-related outcomes, research has yet to identify profiles of positive and negative imagery ability.

Objectives: To explore whether profiles of positive and negative imagery ability exist and evaluate their effects on stress-related outcomes.

Design: Two studies were conducted.

Methods: A large cross-sectional study (N = 663; Study 1) employed multivariate cluster analysis to investigate imagery ability profiles and their associations with self-reported stress, anxiety, and depression. A follow-up experimental study (N = 271; Study 2) aimed to replicate these profiles and examine their effects on psychological responses to guided imagery designed to elicit challenge and threat appraisals.

Results: Three profiles were identified: Higher overall imagers, higher positive/lower negative imagers, and lower overall imagers. Higher positive/lower negative imagers demonstrated a capacity for stress regulation via lower perceived stress, anxiety, and depression, skillful utilization of positive imagery, and resilience to negative imagery.

Conclusions: These findings could inform future studies and applied practice by guiding development of targeted interventions to enhance specific imagery abilities, thus improving general wellbeing and optimizing guided imagery for stress coping.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are linked to increased engagement in reckless/self-destructive behaviors (RSDBs), with affect being a purported mechanism underlying this relationship. To extend such research in a high-risk and vulnerable population, the current study examined the mediating role of negative and positive affect levels in the association between PTSD symptom severity and RSDB engagement among firefighters. Participants were 149 firefighters (M_age = 39.93, 94.6% male) from the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) area who completed a self-report survey on sociodemographic characteristics, negative and positive affect, engagement in RSDBs, and PTSD symptoms. Parallel mediation analysis indicated a significant indirect effect of PTSD symptom severity on RSDB engagement through higher levels of negative affect, (b₁ path; β = 0.35, p < .001, 95% CI: [0.17, 0.48]). In a firefighter sample, negative affect (but not positive affect) levels partially explain associations between PTSD symptoms and RSDB engagement. It may be helpful to clinically target reducing negative affect (e.g., via distress tolerance and mindfulness skills) to improve PTSD symptoms and to lessen RSDB engagement. These findings inform a more nuanced understanding of the role of affective states in associations between PTSD symptoms and RSDBs.

Background/objectives: Inducing self-compassion has shown benefits for social anxiety. Typically, individuals focus on a past or upcoming stressful social situation generally with self-compassion writing prompts. The present research evaluated the possible benefits of focusing self-compassionate writing on maladaptive self-beliefs.

Methods: Across both Study 1 (N = 442 students) and Study 2 (N = 229 students pre-selected for high social anxiety), during a single online session (30 minutes), participants reported their endorsement of maladaptive self-beliefs and then were randomly assigned to reflect on the beliefs within a potential future social situation with self-compassion or control writing prompts. Participants then reported their predicted thoughts and behaviors if the situation were to occur.

Results/conclusions: In both studies, participants in the self-compassion condition reported greater expected state self-compassion and positive affect, lower expected anxiety/distress, and fewer expected safety behaviors, compared to controls. Further, participants in the self-compassion condition showed significant reductions in endorsement of maladaptive self-beliefs from pre- to post-induction in both studies. Finally, in Study 1, the reduction in the endorsement of maladaptive self-beliefs for the self-compassion condition, led to reduced anxiety, which was further associated with lower predicted safety behaviors. Directing self-compassion to maladaptive self-beliefs specifically appears fruitful for socially anxious individuals.

Background and objectives: This pilot study explored the combined impact of arousal reappraisal intervention and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) on state anxiety, challenge and threat appraisals, and performance under high pressure in esport contexts. Arousal reappraisal has previously been shown to enable individuals to interpret physiological arousal more constructively, while tDCS has demonstrated potential to increase the efficacy of psychological interventions.

Design: A fully repeated measures study design was employed where participants experienced four different experimental interventions: tDCS with arousal reappraisal, tDCS with active control, sham stimulation with arousal reappraisal, and sham stimulation with active control.

Methods: Seventeen male Counter-Strike competitors participated in the study. Each participant received all four experimental intervention conditions, with measurements taken of state anxiety, challenge and threat appraisals, and esport performance under pressure.

Results: The findings tentatively suggest that arousal reappraisal effectively reduces cognitive anxiety, promotes favourable challenge appraisals versus threat, and enhances esports performance. This effect appeared more pronounced when arousal reappraisal was combined with anodal tDCS.

Conclusions: Combining arousal reappraisal and tDCS may be a promising intervention for esports competitors facing performance pressure. The synergistic effects of these interventions warrant further investigation in larger samples.

Background and Objectives: The cortisol awakening response (CAR) refers to a phenomenon characterized by a significant increase in cortisol levels following morning awakening. Previous studies have shown that an aberrant CAR is associated with stress-related disorders. However, there is a lack of prospective longitudinal studies examining whether individual differences in the CAR can predict daily stress reactivity.Design and Methods: In a sample of 68 healthy college students (23.5% female, Mage = 18.77, SD = 0.97), saliva samples were collected at 0, 15, 30, and 45 min after awakening on three consecutive days. The participants were then asked to report their daily perceived stress and daily negative affect for a period of 30 days, 18 months later, during the COVID-19-related lockdown in the region.Results: The results indicated that a higher CAR at the beginning of the COVID pandemic was associated with lower levels of daily negative affect assessed 18 months later. Furthermore, the CAR modulated the link between daily perceived stress and negative affect. Specifically, individuals with a higher CAR were more reactive to perceived stress in their daily lives.Conclusions: The present findings provide insights into the psychobiological mechanisms that connect daily stress with mental health.

Background and objective: A stress-is-enhancing mindset refers to viewing the nature of stress as enhancing rather than debilitating and has been linked to better mental health in response to stressors. We examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal link between stress mindset and two mental health outcomes, depressive symptoms and cannabis use, over the COVID-19 pandemic in a diverse sample of adolescents.

Design and methods: A community sample of adolescents completed measures assessing depressive symptoms, cannabis use, and intentions to use cannabis at three time points (T1: 2018-2020, N = 299, T2: 2020, N = 219, T3: 2021, N = 173). Participants completed the stress mindset measure at T2.

Results: Cross-sectionally, a more stress-is-enhancing mindset was associated with fewer depressive symptoms and reduced intentions to use cannabis, which in turn were associated with less cannabis use. Longitudinally, a more stress-is-enhancing mindset was associated with fewer depressive symptoms and indirectly associated with less future cannabis use through behavioral intentions to use cannabis.

Conclusion: This study establishes a stress-is-enhancing mindset as a protective factor against cannabis use and contributes to a growing literature that stress mindset is protective against depression, indicating that stress mindset may be an important protective factor even in the face of naturalistic, chronic stressors.

Individuals with anxiety and social anxiety direct their attention toward emotionally neutral task-irrelevant distractors. However, what happens after attention is paid to neutral distractors remains unknown. This study examined whether attention to distractors enhances long-term memory (LTM) of distractors in individuals with anxiety and social anxiety. Participants performed a visual-search task using real-world objects under either anxiety induction (Experiment 1) or no anxiety induction (Experiment 2). Subsequently, in the surprise-recognition task, participants were required to indicate whether an object had been shown in the visual-search task. The results showed that anxiety and social anxiety, especially the fear of negative evaluation, positively correlated with attentional bias toward neutral distractors. Moreover, mediation analysis showed significant indirect effects of anxiety and social anxiety on LTM through attentional bias. These results suggest that individuals with anxiety and social anxiety involuntarily direct their attention to distractors, which enhances their LTM.

Background: Anxiety was prevalent among emerging adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Conservation of Resources Theory, our goal was to investigate the relations among emotional support, social interaction, COVID-19 news exposure and anxiety symptoms in emerging adults during the early COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Using the COVID-Dynamic dataset, we analyzed data from the first three waves (April 4-18, 2020), resulting in a total of 569 valid participants aged 18-29, with 46.2% identifying as female and a mean age of 23.88 years. The Gaussian Graphical Model was applied to estimate the network models.

Results: Contemporaneous network indicated that anxiety symptoms were related to emotional support, social interaction and COVID-19 news exposure. Temporal network revealed bidirectional relations between emotional support and anxiety, and between COVID-19 news exposure and anxiety. Several anxiety symptoms predicted social interaction one week later. Emotional support was a significant predictor of anxiety symptoms. "I feel nervous" had the highest strength value in the contemporaneous network. "I feel indecisive" had the highest in-strength centrality in the temporal network.

Conclusions: Findings partially support the COR theory and emphasize the need to reevaluate the role of emotional support in the theory.

Elite sport involves confronting stressors that can disrupt athletes' functionality and harm their psychological well-being. Reflecting on these stressors is crucial for gaining insights into coping strategies and future adaptations. We aimed to examine the coping insights developed from engagement in these reflective practices. Via a qualitative analysis of a pilot randomized controlled trial, athletes were randomized to a self-distanced (n = 33) or self-immersed condition (n = 33) and guided to reflect systematically on a key stressor each week over a five-week period. Using an established self-reflection and coping insight framework to guide our framework analysis, we interpreted both similarities and differences between groups across various coping insights. Athletes exhibited signs of self-awareness, trigger identification, and re-appraisal, regardless of their reflective perspective. However, athletes from both groups reported limited insight into values consideration, evaluation, and fostering a future-focus. Stressors reported by athletes were predominantly mild in magnitude or "everyday" in nature. Our findings highlight the need for robust examinations of the self-reflection approach to unlock higher-level insights (future-focus, evaluation of coping strategies) that can enhance resilient capacities. Challenges with recruitment and retention highlights the need for pilot and feasibility analyzes before progressing to fully powered randomized controlled trials with athlete populations.

There is strong evidence that accumulation of stressful life events (SLEs) contributes to depressive episodes, but the effect of cumulative SLEs on longitudinal trajectories of depressive symptoms in the general population is less well understood. In a pre-registered analysis involving multi-group Bayesian piecewise growth curve modeling applied to nationally representative data from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women's Health, we investigated whether, over 36 years, among women aged 45-50 at baseline, the effects of cumulative SLEs on depression symptoms are positive ("sensitizing") or negative ("steeling"), and additive or non-additive (interaction or threshold). Participants were grouped based on the number of SLEs experienced over the first 24 years of the study period: 0-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19, or 20-24. Groups were propensity-score-matched at baseline. While groups differed on mental and physical health at baseline, no group exhibited an increase in depressive symptoms following their final SLE. Moreover, groups with the most SLEs exhibited faster declines in depressive symptoms. There was significant heterogeneity of trajectories within groups. The findings contribute to the growing literature supporting the steeling hypothesis, and suggest that, if SLEs increase the severity of depressive symptoms, they do so in small sub-populations that require further research attention.