This study aimed to examine the influence of anxiety sensitivity on task performance and physiological stress response, and to assess the effect of depression in this process for the youth population.
We presented participants with an uncontrollable stress situation where they were required to perform mental arithmetic, based on the Montreal Imaging Stress Task (MIST). A total of 29 participants volunteered for this study. They completed the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-Revised and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 to measure their levels of anxiety sensitivity and depression. Two saliva samples, one before and one after the experiment, were collected to assess the change in cortisol levels as an index of physiological stress response.
Participants with high anxiety sensitivity showed lower performance on the mental arithmetic tasks and a significant increase in a salivary cortisol level, compared to those with low anxiety sensitivity. Furthermore, cortisol levels showed a remarkable increase where high anxiety sensitivity was coupled with depressed mood. In other hands, the levels of cortisol remained unchanged despite high anxiety sensitivity with low depressed mood.
Our results confirm that the interaction between anxiety sensitivity and depression affects participants’ task performance and stress response, as measured through behavioral tasks and physiological data with self-report indices. Also, through the physiological data, we examined that those who have a high level of anxiety sensitivity showed maladaptive responses under high stressful situation.
Numerous studies have accumulated findings indicating that the way of coping is a critical mediator in the relation between these traumatic events and psychological outcomes. This study investigates the associations between coping strategies and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in Korean adults.
Through an online survey, 554 non-clinical adult respondents were recruited. We assessed PTSS using the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) scale and measured individual coping strategies using the Ways of Coping Checklist (WCCL). Based on the IES-R standard cut-off score, we categorized the respondents into 3 groups: normal (n=255), non-PTSS (n=185) and PTSS (n=144) after exposure to traumatic events.
The scores of each coping strategy in a PTSS group were generally higher than in either the normal or non-PTSS group. In the logistic regression analysis, PTSS group was 2.77 more likely to use Tension-reduction coping compared to the other two samples.
Our findings suggest that PTSS is associated with high inclination to apply emotion-focused coping such as tension-reduction contributing to psychological distress. These results point to the potential value of coping strategies in prevention of and therapeutic approach to PTSS for non-clinical adults.
This study aims to test the effectiveness of a camp program and to analyze the factors related to stress relief. To this end, the present study conducted prospective research for six months on the change of stress, depression, and the level of post-traumatic stress among the firefighters who participated in the camp program.
The perceived stress (PSS-K), stress by the different portion (GARS), post-traumatic stress symptoms (IES-R) and depression (BDI-II) were evaluated at five sessions over the span of six months, and the change of each measure was analyzed. Those five sessions were before the camp, right after the camp and a month, three months and six months after the camp. Moreover, this study assessed characteristics of sociodemographic, firefighting task and mental health that are related to the level of stress at six months after the camp.
Compared with before the camp, the level of depression was significantly lower right after the camp. However, the level did not have significant difference after a month period. At one month after the camp, the level of stress was significantly lower than before the camp, and was maintained after six months. The predictive factors of the degree of stress relief after the camp were high job stress and low disease stress.
This study has found that the stress relief from the camp continued until six months after the camp, and the stress-relieving effect through the camp was substantial for those with higher job stress and lower disease stress.
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