BACKGROUND Evidence suggests an increased risk of smoking among single mothers as compared to their cohabitating counterparts. This article examines the role of psychosocial stress in mediating the relationship between single motherhood and smoking. METHODS Data were derived from a cross-sectional population based sample of German women (n = 3129) with underage children (0-18 years of age). P...

OBJECTIVES Psychosocial stressors such as depression and stress, intimate partner violence (IPV) and alcohol use have been linked to preterm and small-for-gestational-age (SGA) births in general populations. The prevalence of psychosocial stressors and alcohol abuse is high in many HIV-infected (HIV+) populations. Our objective was to evaluate the effects of psychosocial stressors and alcohol a...

Background → Psychosocial stress has been associated with an increased risk for mental and somatic health problems across the life span. Some studies in younger adults linked this to accelerated cellular aging, indexed by shortened telomere length (TL). In older adults, the impact of psychosocial stress on TL may be different due to the lifetime exposure to competing causes of TL-shortening. Th...

Prior research has documented an indirect link between socioeconomic status (SES) and health, and the goal in this study was to help unravel this phenomenon from a dynamic perspective. The authors hypothesized that SES would be positively related to feelings of personal control and negatively related to perceived work stressors. Drawing on dynamic conceptualizations of these psychosocial factor...

BACKGROUND Research indicates that the double jeopardy of exposure to environmental hazards combined with place-based stressors is associated with maternal and child health (MCH) disparities. OBJECTIVE AND DISCUSSION Our aim is to present evidence that individual-level and place-based psychosocial stressors may compromise host resistance such that environmental pollutants would have adverse h...