DNA Methylation Across the Serotonin Transporter Gene Following Marital Separation: A Pilot Study.

BACKGROUND: Marital separation and divorce are stressful life transitions associated with increased risk for a range of poor mental and physical health outcomes. A key task for research in this area is to identify individual differences that may index risk for these adverse outcomes. PURPOSE: To examine the association between DNA methylation across the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) and self-reported emotional distress following marital separation. METHODS: Genomic DNA methylation (from buffy coat fractions of whole blood) was quantified in a sample of 47 adults following a recent marital separation; concurrent with the blood draw, participants completed questionnaires on their psychological adjustment to the separation experience. RESULTS: Relatively greater methylation of SLC6A4 was associated with less subjective separation-related psychological distress, and this association held after accounting for participants' age, length of the relationship, time since the separation, and SLC6A4 genotype, b = -211.99, SE = 94.91, p = .03, 95% CI: -402.22, -25.21. Significantly stronger negative associations were observed between methylation and psychological adjustment among participants who had more recently separated from their former partner. CONCLUSIONS: Although results derived from small samples must be considered preliminary and hypothesis generating, the current study raises new questions about the role of DNA methylation and psychosocial adaptation to stressful life events such as divorce, and the findings can inform future studies in this research area.

Objectively Measured Social Integration Is Associated With an Immune Risk Phenotype Following Marital Separation.

Background: Close relationships play an integral role in human development, and robust evidence links marital separation and divorce to poor health outcomes. Social integration may play a key role in this association. In many ways, the study of marital separation and divorce provides an ideal model system for a more complete understanding of the association between life stress and physical health. Purpose: The current study investigated associations among objectively measured social integration, psychological distress, and biomarkers of immune health in recently separated adults (N = 49). Methods: We collected four measures of immune functioning-interleukin-6, C-reactive protein, and antibody titers to latent cytomegalovirus and Epstein-Barr virus-that were combined to yield a viral-Immune Risk Profile. To assess how variability in social integration is associated with immunological correlates following the end of a marriage, we incorporated observational ecological momentary assessment data using a novel methodology (the Electronically Activated Recorder). Results: We found that objectively measured social behaviors are associated with concurrent viral-Immune Risk Profile scores over and above the effects of psychological distress and that psychological distress may be linked to biomarkers of immune health through social integration. Conclusions: This research expands current knowledge of biomarkers of immune health after divorce and separation and includes a new methodology for objective measures of social engagement.

Heart Rate Variability Moderates the Association Between Separation-Related Psychological Distress and Blood Pressure Reactivity Over Time.

Divorce is a stressor associated with long-term health risk, though the mechanisms of this effect are poorly understood. Cardiovascular reactivity is one biological pathway implicated as a predictor of poor long-term health after divorce. A sample of recently separated and divorced adults (N = 138) was assessed over an average of 7.5 months to explore whether individual differences in heart rate variability-assessed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia-operate in combination with subjective reports of separation-related distress to predict prospective changes in cardiovascular reactivity, as indexed by blood pressure reactivity. Participants with low resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia at baseline showed no association between divorce-related distress and later blood pressure reactivity, whereas participants with high respiratory sinus arrhythmia showed a positive association. In addition, within-person variation in respiratory sinus arrhythmia and between-persons variation in separation-related distress interacted to predict blood pressure reactivity at each laboratory visit. Individual differences in heart rate variability and subjective distress operate together to predict cardiovascular reactivity and may explain some of the long-term health risk associated with divorce.

Relationship status and perceived support in the social regulation of neural responses to threat.

Strong social ties correspond with better health and well being, but the neural mechanisms linking social contact to health remain speculative. This study extends work on the social regulation of brain activity by supportive handholding in 110 participants (51 female) of diverse racial and socioeconomic origins. In addition to main effects of social regulation by handholding, we assessed the moderating effects of both perceived social support and relationship status (married, cohabiting, dating or platonic friends). Results suggest that, under threat of shock, handholding by familiar relational partners attenuates both subjective distress and activity in a network associated with salience, vigilance and regulatory self-control. Moreover, greater perceived social support corresponded with less brain activity in an extended network associated with similar processes, but only during partner handholding. In contrast, we did not observe any regulatory effects of handholding by strangers, and relationship status did not moderate the regulatory effects of partner handholding. These findings suggest that contact with a familiar relational partner is likely to attenuate subjective distress and a variety of neural responses associated with the presence of threat. This effect is likely enhanced by an individual's expectation of the availability of support from their wider social network.

Divorce and Health: Beyond Individual Differences.

This paper reviews what is known about the association between marital dissolution and health outcomes in adults. Two of the major empirical findings in the literature-that most people do well following marital separation and that this life event increases risk for poor outcomes-appear to be in contrast. This paper provides an individual differences framework for reconciling these competing perspectives and suggests that the bulk of the risk for poor outcomes following marital dissolution is carried by a minority of people. Research focusing on at-risk populations is beginning to shed light on mechanisms of action, the processes that explain why and how marital separation and divorce are associated with ill health. The paper outlines a series of future directions that go beyond individual differences to study these mechanisms.

Psychological distress following marital separation interacts with a polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene to predict cardiac vagal control in the laboratory.

Marital separation is linked to negative mental and physical health; however, the strength of this link may vary across people. This study examined changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), used to assess cardiac vagal control, in recently separated adults (N = 79; M time since separation = 3.5 months). When reflecting on the separation, self-reported psychological distress following the separation interacted with a polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) and a relevant single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), rs25531, to predict RSA. Among people reporting emotional difficulties after the separation, those who were homozygous for the short allele had lower RSA levels while reflecting on their relationship than other genotypes. The findings, although limited by the relatively small sample size, are discussed in terms of how higher-sensitivity genotypes may interact with psychological responses to stress to alter physiology.

Familiarity promotes the blurring of self and other in the neural representation of threat.

Neurobiological investigations of empathy often support an embodied simulation account. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we monitored statistical associations between brain activations indicating self-focused threat to those indicating threats to a familiar friend or an unfamiliar stranger. Results in regions such as the anterior insula, putamen and supramarginal gyrus indicate that self-focused threat activations are robustly correlated with friend-focused threat activations but not stranger-focused threat activations. These results suggest that one of the defining features of human social bonding may be increasing levels of overlap between neural representations of self and other. This article presents a novel and important methodological approach to fMRI empathy studies, which informs how differences in brain activation can be detected in such studies and how covariate approaches can provide novel and important information regarding the brain and empathy.

Soothing the threatened brain: leveraging contact comfort with emotionally focused therapy.

Social relationships are tightly linked to health and well-being. Recent work suggests that social relationships can even serve vital emotion regulation functions by minimizing threat-related neural activity. But relationship distress remains a significant public health problem in North America and elsewhere. A promising approach to helping couples both resolve relationship distress and nurture effective interpersonal functioning is Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT), a manualized, empirically supported therapy that is strongly focused on repairing adult attachment bonds. We sought to examine a neural index of social emotion regulation as a potential mediator of the effects of EFT. Specifically, we examined the effectiveness of EFT for modifying the social regulation of neural threat responding using an fMRI-based handholding procedure. Results suggest that EFT altered the brain's representation of threat cues in the presence of a romantic partner. EFT-related changes during stranger handholding were also observed, but stranger effects were dependent upon self-reported relationship quality. EFT also appeared to increase threat-related brain activity in regions associated with self-regulation during the no-handholding condition. These findings provide a critical window into the regulatory mechanisms of close relationships in general and EFT in particular.

Divorce and Death: A Case Study for Health Psychology.

Marital separation and divorce are associated with increased risk for early death, and the magnitude of this association rivals that of many well-established public health factors. In the case of divorce, however, the mechanisms explaining precisely why and how some people are at risk for early death remain unclear. This paper reviews what is known about the association between divorce and risk for all-cause mortality, then discusses four emerging themes in this area of research: the biological intermediaries linking divorce to pathophysiology and disease onset, moving beyond the statistical mean, focusing research on the diathesis-stress model, and studying how opportunity foreclosures may place people on a trajectory toward poor distal health outcomes. These ideas are grounded in a set of public lay commentaries about the association between divorce and death; in this way, the paper seeks to integrate current research ideas with how the general public thinks about divorce and its correlates. Although this paper focuses on divorce, many of the emerging themes are applicable to the study of psychosocial stress and health more generally. Therefore, the study of divorce and death provides a good case study for health psychology and considers new questions that can be pursued in a variety of research areas.