Effectiveness of hardiness, exercise and social support as resources against illness.

The effects of the resistance resources of personality hardiness, exercise, and social support, taken singly and in combination, on concurrent and prospective levels, and probability of illness were studied. In 1980, 85 male business executives identified as high in stressful events were tested for the three resistance resources. Predicting their illness scores in 1980 formed the concurrent aspect of the study. For the prospective aspect, illness scores in 1981 were available on 70 of the subjects. With regard to resistance resources, when there are none, one, two or three, the level and probability of both concurrent and prospective illness drop in a regular and marked fashion. These results highlight the importance of multiple resistance resources. Estimates of relative effectiveness indicate that hardiness is the most important of the resistance resources studied.

A prediction model of suicide among youth.

Epidemiological relationships were studied between adolescent (ages 15 to 24 years) suicide rates and population shifts among adolescents. Suicide rates among adolescents tripled from 1956 to 1977 and have subsequently leveled off. Increases (and decreases) in adolescent suicide rates corresponded to increases (and decreases, respectively) in the proportion of adolescents in the United States. Opposite trends have been found among older age groups. Projected population fluctuations were used to predict trends in adolescent suicide rates to the year 2000: the current decrease in rates is predicted to continue until the mid-1990s. Recent data indicating a decrease in adolescent suicide rates tend to support the population model hypothesis. The data suggest that demographic variables may be of explanatory and predictive use in understanding the epidemiological trends of suicide. Early intervention and prevention strategies emerge from this model, and various social, public health, and research implications exist. However, the results must be viewed with caution because of the methodological problems inherent in using national mortality data, the possibility that other variables may account for the observed relationships, and the length of time required to test such prospective epidemiological propositions.

Type A and hardiness.

The study examined the relationship between the Type A behavior pattern and personality hardiness and predicted an interaction between the two that would be influential for illness onset. Type A and hardiness were found to be conceptually different and empirically independent factors. Under high stressful life events, male executives who were high in Type A and low in hardiness tended toward higher general illness scores than any other executives. Type A and hardiness emerge from this study as bases for extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, respectively.