Life event stress is associated with blunted cardiovascular responding to both personally salient and personally non-salient laboratory tasks.

Life event stress has been associated with blunted cardiovascular reactivity to acute psychological stress. However, recent studies have suggested that blunted reactivity to stress only arises when the laboratory tasks are not personally salient to the individual. We re-analyzed data from 136 healthy young adults where we had previously reported a negative association between life event stress and cardiovascular reactivity to two combined stressors. Participants completed a mental arithmetic task and a personally salient speech task, following a formal baseline period with Finometer-assessed cardiovascular parameters. The reanalyses examined reactivity to the verbal mental arithmetic (personally non-salient) and speech (personally salient) tasks separately and found that life event stress was negatively associated with diastolic blood pressure reactivity, to both the personally non-salient, ß = -.20, p = .023, and personally salient stressors, ß = -.24, p = .004. Life event stress was negatively associated with systolic blood pressure reactivity to the personally salient stressor only, ß = -.20, p = .021, and was not associated with heart rate reactivity. This study provides evidence against the argument that blunted reactivity to stress emerges as a result of stressor context, with findings indicating that low reactors show lower reactivity to both personally salient and personally non-salient stress.

Type D personality and life event stress: the mediating effects of social support and negative social relationships.

Background and Objective: Type D personality has been associated with increased perceptions of stress. As Type D individuals have been noted to report lower social support and greater perceptions of negativity in social interactions, this study examined if the association between Type D personality and life events stress was mediated by these social relationships. Design: A cross-sectional design. Methods: Undergraduate students (N = 197) completed questionnaires assessing Type D personality, social support, negative social relationships, and life events stress. Results: Unadjusted analyses revealed that Type D individuals perceived their life events to be significantly more stressful than non-Type D individuals. Type D individuals also reported increased perceptions of negative social relationships and lower social support. Finally, the association between Type D personality and life events stress was mediated by perceptions of negative social relationships. However, when controlling for the main effects of negative affectivity and social inhibition, Type D was not significantly associated with social relationship or life events variables. Further, effects appeared to be primarily driven by negative affectivity. Conclusion: These results support recent findings in the Type D literature that have identified null effects of Type D when controlling for negative affectivity.

An individual differences investigation of the relations among life event stress, working memory capacity, and mind wandering: A preregistered replication-extension study.

Klein and Boals (2001a, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 15[5], 565-579, Experiments 1 and 2) found that working memory capacity correlated negatively with perceived negative life event stress and speculated the relation may be driven by thoughts produced from these experiences. Here, we sought to replicate the association between working memory capacity and perceived negative life experience and to assess potential mediators of this association such as mind wandering propensity, rumination propensity, and the sum of negatively valenced mind wandering reports. In this preregistered replication and extension study, with data collected from 356 subjects (ns differ among analyses), we found no evidence suggesting that perceived negative life stress is associated with working memory capacity. Additionally, we found evidence consistent with the claim that negatively valenced mind wandering is uniquely detrimental to cognitive task performance, but we highlight a potential confound that may account for this association that should be addressed in future work.

Maternal life stress and health during the first 3 years postpartum.

Health problems may occur in mothers and can persist during the postpartum. Life event stress (LES) is a risk factor for poor maternal health. We examined the relations of LES and rise in LES over time to maternal health during the first three years postpartum. We used data from 1,364 mothers obtained between 1991 and 2007 in the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Information on maternal sociodemographics and early postpartum health was collected 1 month after childbirth. Maternal reports on health status and LES were obtained at 6, 15, 24, and 36 months postpartum. Latent growth curve analyses were performed, with maternal sociodemographics and early postpartum health as covariates for which statistical adjustment was made. Maternal health declined steadily in a linear pattern with marked individual differences, whereas maternal LES increased gradually in a linear pattern. Moreover, faster maternal health decline was associated with poorer early health at 1 month postpartum, greater exposure to LES at 6 months postpartum, and faster rise in LES exposure over time. Decline in maternal health may be explained at least in part by the deleterious effects of exposure to stressful life events.

Stressful life events and severity of alcohol consumption in male psychiatric inpatients.

AIM: To assess the levels of alcohol consumption and the level of stress faced by male patients hospitalized with psychiatric disorders in a military hospital. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 100 consecutive patients admitted to a tertiary care psychiatric center and 100 controls. The patients with psychiatric ailments were first stabilized mentally and physically and then assessed. For the collection of demographic data, a questionnaire was prepared which was administered to all patients. The Armed Forces Medical College Life Events scale was used for the assessment of stressful life events. The Michigan Alcohol Screening Test (MAST) was applied as a screening procedure for alcohol use disorder. For assessing the severity of alcohol consumption, the Hilton Drinking Behavior Questionnaire (HDBQ) was utilized. RESULTS: Analysis revealed that 16% of the psychiatric patients scored above the cutoff score on the MAST compared to 2% of controls. On the HDBQ, 22% of the psychiatric patients had a significant score compared to 4% of controls. Patients with psychiatric disorders experienced significantly more number of life events compared to the controls irrespective of the length of service. The Psychiatric group experienced significantly more life change units both in 1-year prior and in lifetime period. CONCLUSION: Psychiatric patients face significantly higher stressful life events, experience significantly more life changes, and consume significantly more alcohol as compared to healthy participants.

A Comparative Study of Depression and Stress Related Life Events among Women in the Menopausal Stage / 간호학회지

The purpose of this study was to examine the comparative between depression and stress related to life events among women in the menopausal stage. Menopausal stages were divided into two groups: Pre and post- menopausal stages. The degree of depression and stress related to life events between pre and post menopausal women were compared to each other. Women, aged between 41 and 59 years, answered self-reported questionnaires which included Zung's depression scale and life events scale modified by Lee (1984). Findings were as follows; 1) The mean score of premenopausal women who experienced depression was 39.66, and for post-menopausal women the score was 41.45. There was no significant differences in depression levels between pre and post menopausal group.s (t=-1.55, p=.122). 2) Menopausal women experienced low levels of stress related to life events. There were no significant differences between pre and post menopausal groups(t=.527, p>.05). Both pre and post menopausal groups were highly concerned about education issues of their children and disharmony between couples. 3) There was a significant relationship between depression and stress related to life events among post-menopausal groups (r=.22, p<.01). Based on the findings of this study, the menopausal depression was associated with stress related to life events, especially among post-menopausal women. Feelings of lost fertility and feminine attributies result in menopausal depression, which is significantly correlated with women's negative perception of their life events. Therefore, nursing intervention needs to develop to help reduce the levels of depression and overcome their negative perception of the menopausal experience. Nurses should develop nursing strategies to help menopausal women to have positive perceptions and enhance quality of life by assisting their adaptability to physiological and psychological changes related to menopause.

Life Event Stress and Coping Strategies in Patients with Alopecia Areata and Androgenetic Alopecia / 대한피부과학회지

BACKGROUND: Psychosocial stress and stressful events in life have been reported to be closely related to the onset and acute exacerbation of some dermatologic disorders, such as alopecia areata, psoriasis, seborrheic dermatitis and atopic dermatitis. However, the nature of the association between stress and dermatologic disorders remains unclear. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to determine the relation of stress and the onset and exacerbation of dermatologic disorders. Furthermore we studied whether the coping strategies to stress are related to dermatologic disorders. METHOD: We examined 30 patients with alopecia areata, 30 patients with androgenetic alopecia who visited Dept. of Dermatology, Chung-Ang University Hospital and a control group of 30 who visited our clinic at the same time for tinea pedis and onychomycosis, which are supposed not to be related to stress. For the evaluation of stress we used questionares of 'Scale of Life Events' and 'Multidimensional Coping Scale'. RESULT: 1) The score of life event stress in the alopecia areata group was significantly higher than that of the normal control group. The score of life event stress in androgenetic alopecia was higher than that of the normal control group with no statistical significance. 2) In the aspect of coping strategies, the alopecia areata group was significantly higher than the normal control group at the passive withdrawal and fatalism, while in the normal control group, emotional pacification, positive comparison and religious seeking tended to be higher than the alopecia areata group. In the androgenetic alopecia group, no significant pathologic coping strategies were found compared with the control. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that the psychosocial stress may play a role in the pathogenesis of alopecia areata and androgenetic alopecia. But to clarify the exact role of stress, further studies about biological parameters of physiologic changes to stress are needed in the future.

Life Event Stress and Coping Strategy in the Patients with Coronary Artery Disease / 신경정신의학

OBJECTIVES: This study was aimed to investigate and compare the life event stress unit, coping strategy and other risk factors in coronary artery disease patients who visited Cardiovascular Division of Dept. of Internal Medicine Chung-Ang University Hospital. METHODS: Review of medical chart, semi-structured interview, Scale of Life Events and Multidemensional Coping Scale were applied to patients group(No.=26) who were diagnosed as cardiovascular disease at Cardiovascular Division Dept. of Internal Medicine, Chung-Ang University Hospital and control group(No.=37) who were screened as normal at Health Screening Center. The data were processed by T test and Chi-square test using SPSS version 7.0. RESULTS: 1) The scores of life event stress of patient group were significantly higher(372.34+/-172.81) than those of normal control group(228.27+/-116.37)(p<0.05). 2) In the aspect of coping strategies, the patients' group was significantly higher than normal control group at the fatalism, accomodation and self-criticism(p<0.05), while in the normal control group, the positive comparison and religious seeking tended to be higher than in the patients group, with no statistical significance. 3) Comparing other risk factors of coronary artery disease, the patients group was higher than the normal control group at the incidence of diabetes, hypo-HDL-cholesterolemia and hypertension(p<0.05). But the incidence of smoking, hypertriglyceridemia and hypercholesterolemia did not differ significantly. CONCLUSIONS: The life event stress was found to be one of the risk factors of coronary artery disease. The passive-negative coping strategies, such as the fatalism, accomodation and selfcriticism, were also another risk factors.