Anxiety Stress and Coping最新文献

Background: Theories propose that low distress tolerance (DT) leads to anxious avoidance. Operational definitions and measurement of DT are inconsistent across studies. This study examined associations between perceived and behavioral DT with experiential and anxiety-specific behavioral avoidance in the context of anxiety.

Design and methods: 174 undergraduate students (68% women, 18-27 years) participated in an online study that included questionnaires assessing perceived DT, anxiety symptoms, experiential avoidance, anxiety-specific behavioral avoidance, and a behavioral DT task.

Results: Perceived DT was associated with experiential avoidance and anxiety-specific behavioral avoidance. Associations between DT and avoidance were not moderated by anxiety. On the behavioral DT task, participants with high anxiety reported higher distress pre-, mid-, and post-task compared to participants with low anxiety. Participants with distress increases from pre-to-mid-task were more likely to quit the task; this was not moderated by anxiety. When all measures of DT and avoidance were examined together, only perceived DT and experiential avoidance explained variance in anxiety.

Conclusions: Perceived and behavioral DT measures likely capture different components of DT. Behavioral DT tasks may be less effective in inducing distress in participants with high anxiety compared to low anxiety. Perceived DT and experiential avoidance were most associated with anxiety.

Background and objectives: The emotion belief and emotion regulation pathways that shape negative (posttraumatic depreciation; PTD) and positive adaptation (posttraumatic growth; PTG) following daily life stressors are poorly understood. This longitudinal study examined how emotion beliefs and emotion regulation strategies influence PTD and PTG, and subsequent mental (depression, anxiety, stress) and physical health (headaches, gastrointestinal problems, respiratory infections, sleep disturbances) symptoms.

Design and method: A longitudinal panel design was used. British participants (N = 627) completed an online survey measuring life stressors, emotion beliefs, emotion regulation, PTD and PTG, and mental and physical health at two time points six months apart (October 2021 and April 2022).

Results: The path model explained 18-21% of the variance in mental and physical health outcomes. Cognitive mediation and emotion beliefs were negatively and positively related to PTD. Maladaptive emotion regulation was positively associated with PTD, and worse mental and physical health. Adaptive emotion regulation was positively related to PTG, and less depressive and stress symptoms. PTG was negatively related to depression, and PTD was negatively associated with mental and physical health.

Conclusions: Distinct pathways to PTD and PTG operate through superordinate emotion beliefs and emotion regulation. Interventions targeting emotion beliefs and emotion regulation may improve mental and physical health following adversity.

Background and objectives: COVID Stress Syndrome (CSS) is a new type of health anxiety triggered by the COVID epidemic. However, we know little about the causal relationship with CSS symptoms and the temporal and dynamic interactions between symptoms and cognitive processes associated with health anxiety.

Design: During the epidemic of COVID-19, 193 Chinese university students completed experience sampling methods on CSS symptoms and related constructs of health anxiety three times a day for 14 days.

Methods: Multilevel vector autoregressive (mlVAR) models were used to estimate contemporaneous and temporal networks at the within-person level.

Results: (1) The CSS symptoms were divided into two periods of growth and maintenance during these 14 days. (2) The COVID-19 traumatic stress dimension played a crucial role in maintaining the symptom network. (3) Catastrophizing of bodily sensations and rumination formed a positive feedback loop with COVID traumatic stress symptoms dimension of the CSS.

Conclusion: This study advances the current understanding of CSS at the symptom level and temporal dynamics. The results suggest that the COVID traumatic stress dimension is a core mechanism for CSS maintenance and could be a point of focus for intervention and treatment in clinical practice.

Background: Early adulthood and commencing university coincide with new life circumstances for many students which increases exposure to negative life events (NLE). Such events can have lasting impacts on student mental health. An exploratory study was conducted in a student sample to examine the frequency of NLE, event co-occurrence, and associated mental health outcomes.

Methods: Six-hundred-and-fifty university students completed the Negative Life Events Scale for Students and the Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale. Normative data was examined for NLE's experienced by women and men across the lifespan, and in the last 12-months to provide an overview of students' experience. An exploratory factor analysis on the experience of NLE in the last 12-months examined co-occurrence of events and associated vulnerability.

Results: Ninety-eight percent of students experienced at least one NLE, and 50% were experienced in the last 12-months. Events relating to academic problems and domestic violence were associated with poorer mental health, were common, and occurred relatively recently. Six factors were identified demonstrating some NLE co-occur.

Conclusions: These findings confirm the high prevalence of NLE among university students, with psychological/addiction issues and academic pressures had the strongest associations with poorer mental health. Findings may inform targeted student mental health support programs.

Background: Few studies have examined the effects of brief focused breathing techniques. This study investigated the impact of brief slow-paced breathing (SPB) with a longer exhalation on working memory and perceived mood, stress, and arousal.

Design: Between-subjects experimental design.

Methods: Participants (139 undergraduates, 69% female) were randomized to a one-time SPB session or a mind-wandering active control condition. The participants completed the OSPAN working memory task and state measures of mood, stress, and arousal at three time points: baseline, post-manipulation, and post-task.

Results: OSPAN performance improved in the experimental group. Mood improved in the experimental group but decreased in the control group from baseline to post-manipulation and then decreased in both conditions after completing the OSPAN task. Stress decreased in the experimental group from baseline to post-manipulation and was significantly different from the control group at the post-manipulation time point. Stress then increased from post-manipulation to post-task in both conditions. Arousal decreased in both conditions from baseline to post-manipulation but then increased from post-manipulation to post-task.

Conclusions: The current results demonstrate that a brief SPB session with longer exhalation improved working memory and temporarily improved mood and stress thus providing a just-in-time intervention to help individuals cope with stress-inducing conditions.

Introduction: Although stress is commonly characterized as harmful, interventions promoting adaptive stress mindsets have led to improved physiological, psychological, and behavioral outcomes. Interventions including rehearsal of stress mindset strategies may improve health and functioning.

Methods: We tested the efficacy of an intervention including an in-person stress mindset seminar and daily rehearsal on psychosocial outcomes and daily stress-related processes over 21 days. Eighty-eight first-year college students were randomized to a stress-is-enhancing condition (SEC) or non-intervention-control (NIC). The SEC attended an interactive seminar providing education about stress physiology and strategies to adopt a more positive stress mindset. Daily dairies recorded stress processes (perceived stress, stress mindset, affect, and daily stressor appraisals) with writing prompts encouraging daily rehearsal of seminar strategies for the SEC.

Results: The intervention produced more adaptive stress mindsets, improved depression and anxiety symptoms, as well as improved daily challenge appraisals and greater perceived ability to cope with stressors, relative to control. No effect was found on daily affect, perceived daily stress, or perceptions of daily stressors as threatening or controllable.

Discussion: These findings further support the efficacy of stress mindset interventions on psychosocial health and adaptive cognitive responses to daily stress and suggest that rehearsal may help maintain effects.

Background: One psychological factor that relates to individuals' level of emotional distress and how they view coping with that distress is the mindsets they hold about the nature of emotions and clinical symptoms.

Method: The current study (N = 978 undergraduate students; M_age= 19.01 years, 71.9% female, 68.9% White/Caucasian) used repeated measures General Linear Models (GLMs) and multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) to examine the relationships between mindsets in specific domains - malleability, function, and individual aspects of emotions - and which mindsets in each domain have the strongest relationships with clinical symptoms, treatment attitudes, and treatment preference. This statistical approach allows us to examine the relative strength in the relationships between specific mindsets within a particular domain (e.g., malleability) and study outcomes.

Results: When all mindsets in a specific domain (e.g., malleability, function, or specific facet of emotion) were included as simultaneous predictors in analyses, certain mindsets held specific relationships with outcomes. For example, more malleable mindsets about anxiety had the stronger relationships with anxiety symptoms.

Conclusion: The current study clarified that certain mindsets held the strongest relationship with specific outcomes, such as the anxiety malleability mindset with anxiety symptoms, while certain mindsets had equally strong relationships with symptoms and treatment attitudes.

Backgrounds and objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of self-perceptions of aging on positive and negative affect and to examine whether this association is mediated by sense of hopelessness. It was hypothesized that increases in positive self-perceptions of aging would be associated with decreases in hopelessness over time, which in turn would be associated with higher future levels of affective well-being.

Methods: The study used longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study collected in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 (N ≈ 11,500, average age ≈ 62). The random-intercept cross-lagged panel model was used for analyzing the data. The mediation was tested at the temporal within-person level.

Results: The mediation hypothesis was supported for negative affect but not for positive affect. The results showed that higher-than-typical levels of positive perceptions of aging were associated with lower-than-typical levels of hopelessness, which in turn was related to lower-than-typical future levels of negative affect.

Conclusion: Hopelessness mediates the longitudinal relationship between self-perceptions of aging and negative affect. The findings emphasize the significance of considering hope in interventions designed to address negative affect and subjective beliefs about aging.

Objective: The study aims to examine the relationship between daily negative affect and rumination in the context of work and to verify their mediating roles in the process of burnout.

Design: A classic longitudinal design with two measurement points for burnout was combined with 10 daily online assessments of negative affect and rumination among 235 civil servants.

Results: A random intercept cross-lagged panel model was implemented. Carryover, cross-lagged, and same-day relationships between work-related negative affect and rumination were analysed from a within-person perspective. The results did not confirm reproducible carryover and cross-lagged effects. The only significant positive associations were found for same-day relationships. At the between-person level, a mediation model of the random intercepts of negative affect and rumination between two burnout measurements was tested. Negative affect was positively related to rumination; however, only negative affect partially mediated the relationship between burnout levels over a four-month interval.

Conclusions: The study clarifies the role of rumination in the process of job burnout. First, after removing stable interpersonal differences, reciprocal effects between daily negative affect and daily rumination could not be confirmed. Second, work-related affect may longitudinally play a greater role in burnout exacerbation than ruminating on work.

Background and objectives: External stressful experiences are often linked to poor relationship functioning. Current research examined the association between COVID-19 stress and dyadic adjustment (DA) and tested whether the strength of this association was dependent on specific forms of dyadic coping (DC). Under COVID-19 stress, stress communication and supportive and common DC were expected to be related to higher levels of DA.

Methods: Cross-sectional data were collected from 102 married couples in Turkey. The mean age of men and women was 34.77 years (SD = 8.71) and 32.37 years (SD = 8.06), respectively. Data were analyzed using Actor-Partner Interdependence Moderation Models (APIMoM) with multilevel modeling.

Results: The findings indicated that COVID-19 stress tended to decrease DA. Partners' increased use of emotion-focused supportive DC and effective stress communication buffered the detrimental effect of COVID-19 stress on DA.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that couple interventions in Turkey focusing on the enhancement of emotional expression, stress communication, and validation of the partner may help mitigate the adverse impacts of acute crises on relational well-being.