Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Stress (psychology)'

Psychology graduate trainees are exposed to a variety of stressors during their education, such as costly tuition, long hours of study, and demanding clinical work. There is a need for graduate institutions to help trainees build self-care skills; however, there is little agreement about the best approach for boosting these skills. The present study proposes that self-care training may benefit from helping students to build self-compassion (an attitude of warmth directed inward). To explore the possibility that self-compassion promotes student wellbeing, a sample of 122 mental health trainees was recruited from a large Midwestern training institution. Most participants were female (82.8%) and the mean age was 30.2 years. The sample was ethnically diverse. Over half identified as Caucasian (56.6%), with the reminder identifying as African American, Latino/a, Asian, Filipino, or American Indian or Alaska Native. All participants completed measures of three variables: self-compassion, self-care behavior, and perceived stress. The results showed that students with greater levels of self-compassion experience significantly lower levels of perceived stress (r = -.57, p < .001) and engaged in significantly more self-care behavior (r = .64, p < .001). Furthermore, self-care behavior partially mediated the effect of self-compassion on perceived stress, and this partial mediation effect was statistically significant (z = -3.42, p < .001). These findings indicate that greater self-compassion is associated with more self-care behavior, which, in turn, is associated with reduced stress levels. Therefore, graduate institutions that wish to promote student wellbeing can benefit from teaching students ways to build self-compassion.

Although numerous studies have identified the buffering effects of different coping strategies in stress and health research, few studies have considered the influence of cultural factors such as allocentrism (degree of collectivism). The present study examined whether the collectivistic coping strategies of support (support from racially similar others, support from experienced others, support from family) and avoidance (forbearance, fatalism) were associated with perceived and physiological stress levels, and whether allocentrism influenced this relationship, among a sample of low-income mothers. Results showed that higher use of support from family and lower use of avoidance coping were associated with lower levels of perceived stress and lower morning cortisol. Among women high in allocentrism, those who used support from experienced others had lower levels of perceived stress. These results contribute to our understanding of the role of culture in stress-coping research and how culture influences our physiological stress reactions.

As organizations become increasingly complex, research into the sources and effects of employee stress is increasingly warranted. The present study examined the relationship between personal life stress, work stress, and job performance. In addition, the role of conscientiousness as a possible moderating variable was analyzed. Several studies regarding the relationship between stress and work performance were reviewed. In the present study, participants completed measures of life stress, job stress, and personality. Supervisors rated the job performance of participants. A significant relationship was found between personal life stress and job stress such that each type of stress was higher when the other was present. Neither personal life stress nor job stress were related to job performance. Conscientiousness was not found to moderate the stress-job performance relationships. Implications of the study and future directions are explored.

High prenatal stress and the stress hormone cortisol have been shown to lead to adverse birth outcomes. Yet, few studies have examined the efficacy of prenatal stress management programs on improving prenatal stress and cortisol outcomes, specifically what factors (i.e., participant comprehension and content fidelity) in implementing these programs might influence whether pregnant women obtain improved stress outcomes. This study demonstrated that participant comprehension (i.e., how well a participant understands program material) and content fidelity (i.e., how well instructors adhere to core program components) were not associated with stress and cortisol outcomes among low-income pregnant women enrolled in a stress management program. Future research should investigate whether program characteristics (e.g., cultural norms of the population, skill-learning, or therapeutic-oriented processes) mediate these implementation factors. By understanding multivariate models of implementation factors and program characteristics, health care practitioners can effectively provide the CBSM program to pregnant women across at-risk communities.

Collegiate student-athletes face multiple stressors during their college experience. Examples of these stressors include limited finances, issues with time management, preventing and coping with injuries, managing success and failure, and maintaining relationships. In addition to the general stressors that student-athletes face, African American female student-athletes experience unique stressors due to the intersectionality of their identities as both African Americans and women (as well as other potential dimensions such as socioeconomic status and sexual orientation). These stressors include: race-related stress, feeling silenced, and being subjected to negative stereotypes. Despite the significant representation of African American female student-athletes in collegiate sport, there is only one known stress management intervention specifically designed for African American female student-athletes. Therefore, the purpose of this research project was to develop the curriculum for a stress management workshop to assist African American female student-athletes with engagement in culturally-syntonic and effective stress management techniques. In order to inform the curriculum, three autobiographies of African American female athletes were analyzed with particular attention to descriptions of their college years. Thematic analysis of these autobiographies was integrated with relevant empirical and intervention-related literature to develop a four-session workshop. The curriculum was evaluated by two former African American female student-athletes and two psychologists with experience working with the target population. Strengths, weaknesses, and suggestions for the further development of the workshop’s curriculum are provided. Practical implications and recommendations for mental health professionals and the athletic community are presented.

The aim of this licentiate thesis was to examine consequences of chronic stress for stressrelated diseases and to investigate the chronic stress – cognition relationship. In the first study data covering ten years was used from the Betula Prospective Cohort Study (Nilsson et al., 1997). Based on the ratings on a stress scale, matched samples between 40 and 65 years of age were divided into a high and low stress group. The reported incidence of cardiovascular, diabetes, psychiatric, tumor, and musculoskeletal diseases wasassessed five and ten years after a baseline assessment. The incidence of diseases five years after baseline assessment showed no differences between the groups. After ten years, there was a higher incidence of psychiatric diseases in the high stress group as well as a significant effect for tumors. These results indicated that moderately elevated stress levels may have an impact on psychiatric diseases, especially depression, and possibly also some tumor diseases, but it was concluded that prolonged moderate stress does not appear to be very harmful to health in general. In the second study cognitive performance was studied in chronic stress outpatients and matched controls. A battery of cognitive tests assessing processing speed, attention, episodic-, semantic- and working memory was used. Performance decrements for thechronic stress patients were found in episodic memory, particularly in learning across repeated trials, and in tasks requiring divided attention under either encoding or retrieval of words. Performance differences were also seen in aspects of working memory, mental tempo, semantic access (letter fluency) and prospective memory. It was concluded that executive functioning may be suboptimal in chronic stress patients and that letter fluency and prospective memory tests can be useful as clinical tools when evaluating chronic stressstates. Taken together, the findings indicate that there is no clear association between moderately elevated chronic stress and increased incidence of stress related diseases, whereas certain cognitive functions such as executive functioning appear vulnerable to chronic stress.

Attachment theory suggests that previous experiences direct one’s interpretations of potentially stressful events and one’s reaction to these events. As university students interact with a novel environment and face new demands, they may experience elevated levels of stress. Dependent on what resources they feel are available to them, they might feel confident in addressing these challenges, or they may believe they cannot meet the demands of the college environment. This perception of ability or inability can affect personal and academic success. Using attachment theory as a foundation, this study investigated the relationships among students’ attachment dynamics, coping styles, and perceived stress in a sample 174 West Virginia University students. Based on attachment theory and previous research, it was expected that both students’ attachment dynamics and coping styles would explain variance in perceived stress. As predicted, using hierarchical multiple regression analyses, both attachment dynamics and coping styles were observed to explain a significant amount of variance (26.8–45.5% variance explained) in the perception of stress, after accounting for demographic variables. Results of this study are explored with regard to how they can inform clinical work and future research with the university student population.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact that attachment (as measured by an adult attachment measure) has on a college student's perceived stress levels. A sample of seven hundred and twenty-seven college students ranging from 18 to 30 years (N=727; 73.2% female, 26.8% male; 46.8% Hispanic/Latino, 18.2% Asian/Pacific Islander, 13.3% Caucasian, 7.4% other/mixed, 5.0% Middle Eastern, 4.5% African American/Black, 4.5% Armenian, and 0.3% Native American) completed two self-report questionnaires assessing attachment styles (ECR-S) and perceived stress levels (PSS). Analyses revealed a statistically significant relationship between an adult's level of secure attachment and level of perceived stress. The overall results showed that secure attachment levels were significantly and negatively related to perceived stress levels. These results provide further evidence of the impact that earlier relationships have on a person's functioning in adulthood, specifically with regards to one's ability to cope with a physically and emotionally demanding environment. Implications for providing attachment related interventions and directions for future research are explored.