The present study examined whether and how stressor diversity, the extent to which stressor events are spread across multiple types of stressors, contributes to daily affective well-being through the adult life span. Stressor diversity was examined as a unique predictor of daily affect and as a moderator of stressor exposure and stressor reactivity effects. Analyses span 2 independent studies o...

Little is known about how survivors of extreme events cope with traumatic memories and subsequent negative life experiences. The present study compared (a) repatriated prisoners of war (RPWs) from World War II (WW II) with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), (b) RPWs without PTSD, and (c) noncombat veterans on measures of general psychological functioning, appraisal, and coping. Appra...

OBJECTIVE The results from experimental studies indicate that physically active individuals remain calmer and report less anxiety after the induction of a standardized stressor. The current study extends this research to real life, and examines whether daily physical activity attenuates negative affect that occurs in response to naturally occurring daily stressors. METHOD The current study us...

The short (s) variant of the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) gene linked functional polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) is associated with depression. Stressful life events, gender, and race have been shown to moderate this association. We examined the relationship between 5-HTTLPR genotype and symptoms of depression in two samples. Study 1 = 288 participants from a study of caregiver stress; and Study...

BACKGROUND Recent evidence indicates that individuals who are homozygous for the short (s) allele in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene have higher rates of depression and other psychiatric disorders as a function of exposure to increasing levels of stressful life events than do individuals who have one or two copies of the long (l) allele. Despite the reliability of this ass...

One of the most fertile areas in social psychiatry in the last two decades has been the study of the aetiology of depressive illness. The number of reports appearing requires periodic stocktaking to keep abreast of developments, but the criteria by which findings should be evaluated are not always self-evident and merit some consideration. This theme is particularly topical in view of a recent ...

BACKGROUND An unresolved issue in psychiatry research concerns the assumption that detrimental effects of negative life events on mental health may be buffered by a multitude of positive life events. However, there is clear lack of empirical evidence for this assumption, and one may even argue that positive life events act as additional stressors and thus increase (and not decrease) the risk fo...

OBJECTIVE Childhood maltreatment is associated with early alcohol use initiation, alcohol-related problem behaviors, and alcohol use disorders in adulthood. Heavy drinking risk among individuals exposed to childhood maltreatment could be partly attributable to stress sensitization, whereby early adversity leads to psychobiological changes that heighten sensitivity to subsequent stressors and in...

stressful life events may play an important role in coronary heart disease and sudden cardiac death. this study was performed to compare the frequency of stressful events and mental strain in patients with acute myocardial infarction (mi) and normal population. a case-control study was performed on 50 survivors of mi and 50 controls with no evidence of cardiovascular disease, matched by age, ge...