Chronic Stress

For many marginalized people, coping with discrimination is not a temporary condition. Rather it is endemic to living in a discriminatory society and a source of ongoing stress. In this paper, we explore the need to provide people struggling to cope with the skills to tackle not just the personal consequences of discrimination, but also to understand and address the root causes of their pain, and specifically the ones that lie outside of themselves. We propose using the concept of social capital to bring greater awareness among clients, clinicians, and society in general about the need to pair the treatment of personal distress with concurrent practices to understand and tackle larger systemic issues impacting their mental health...

Suicidal ideation and behavior are among the most severe psychiatric presentations, warranting emergency room visits and psychiatric admission for higher levels of care. In the United States, suicide rates continue to climb, especially in younger patients, and the continued psychosocial stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic may further exacerbate this crisis. Suicidal ideation and behavior are core features of a major depressive episode, but there are limited treatment options to rapidly redress these life-threatening symptoms...

A stressor-related disorder wherein traumatic experience precipitates protracted disruptions to mood and cognition, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with wide-ranging abnormalities across the body. While various methods have investigated these deviations, only proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1 H MRS) enables noninvasive measurement of small-molecule metabolites in the living human. 1 H MRS has correspondingly been employed to test hypotheses about the composition and function of multiple brain regions putatively involved in PTSD...

Background: Stress and cortisol dysregulation are linked to NCDs. Moreover, stress favours unhealthy lifestyle patterns, which increase the risk for NCDs. The role of the Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR) and the effect of lifestyle interventions on the same remain unclear. Methods: The impact of the intensive 8-week phase of the Healthy Lifestyle Community Programme (HLCP, cohort 1) on parameters of the CAR, ie cortisol values 0 (sample [S]1), 30), 45 and 60 minutes post-awakening, average peak, S1-peak delta and area under the increase curve (AUCI ), and perceived stress levels (PSL) was evaluated in a non-randomized, controlled trial...

Background: Most preclinical research on the effects of stress has been done on male subjects, even though women are more prone than men to experience stress-related problems. Chronic social defeat stress (CSDS) is a rodent model of psychosocial stress. However, this model has been challenged in female mouse studies since neither male nor female resident mice attack intruder females. A female-to-female CSDS model is needed to investigate the physiological and behavioral aspects. Methods: The intruders were either male or female C57BL/6J mice, whereas the residents were male or ovariectomized (OVX) female CD-1 mice...

Background: Individuals who report sexual identity-uncertainty are at-risk for heavy alcohol consumption and alcohol use disorder symptomology. The current study examined the impact of states of aversive self-focus on subsequent consumption of ostensibly alcohol-containing beverages among a sample of women in early adulthood with varying levels of sexual identity-uncertainty ( N  = 75). Methods: Utilizing a 2 ( self-focus : negative vs. neutral) × 2 ( attribution for any psychological discomfort : external vs...

There are known disparities in the burden of illness and access/quality of care for African, Latino/a, Asian, and Native American (ALANA) patients diagnosed with depressive disorders, which may occur because of health inequities. Racial stress and trauma (RST), or the significant fear and distress that can be imparted from exposure to racism, is one such inequity linked to the development of depression. The current review summarizes past research examining the association between racism, RST, and depression, as well as avenues in which RST becomes biologically embedded in ALANA individuals...

Background: A robust literature supports the role of the metabotropic glutamate receptor type 5 (mGluR5) in cognitive functioning. mGluR5 is also implicated in the pathophysiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD), which are characterized by cognitive alterations. However, the relationship between mGluR5 and cognition in MDD and PTSD has not yet been directly investigated. To address this gap, we examined the relationship between in vivo mGluR5 availability and cognition in PTSD, MDD, and matched healthy adults (HA)...

Preliminary evidence supports the use of psychedelics for major depressive disorder (MDD). However, less attention has been given to the neural mechanisms behind their effects. We conducted a systematic review examining the neuroimaging correlates of antidepressant response following psychedelic interventions for MDD. Through MEDLINE, Embase, and APA PsycINFO, 187 records were identified and 42 articles were screened. Six published studies and one conference abstract were included. Five ongoing trials were included from subjective outcomesTrials...

Background: Many of the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic were consistent with factors shown to be predictive of parental stress and burnout. The purpose of the current study was to use a retrospective pretest method to gain an understanding of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on levels of parental burnout and on parenting practices. Method: A brief survey was conducted using a retrospective pretest method to examine parental burnout (The Parental Burnout Assessment , Roskam et al, 2018) and parenting practices (The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire, Frick, 1991)...

Background: Chronic stress is a highly prevalent condition that may stem from different sources and can substantially impact physiology and behavior, potentially leading to impaired mental and physical health. Multiple physiological and behavioral lifestyle features can now be recorded unobtrusively in daily-life using wearable sensors. The aim of the current study was to identify a distinct set of physiological and behavioral lifestyle features that are associated with elevated levels of chronic stress across different stress sources...

Background: Fibroblast Growth Factor 2 (FGF2) is a neurotrophic protein that has been implicated as a biomarker for anxiety and depressive disorders, which comprise a significant component of the global burden of disease. Research using rodents has indicated that FGF2 is part of the stress response, but whether this translates to humans has yet to be investigated. In this study, we aimed to explore the potential role of FGF2 in the human stress response by examining its association with physiological and psychological processes during and following the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST)...

Background: Individuals who experience emotional, physical, or sexual abuse as children suffer from higher rates of major depressive disorder, drug abuse, and suicide. Early life interventions such as peer support groups can be beneficial to adolescents who experience trauma, suggesting that social support is important in facilitating rehabilitation and promoting resiliency to stress. Although there are some animal paradigms that can model how peer-peer interactions influence stress-reactivity, less is known about how individual stress experiences influence the effectiveness of social buffering...

Background: Brain ventricles have been reported to be enlarged in several neuropsychiatric disorders and in aging. Whether human cerebral ventricular volume can decrease over time with psychiatric treatment is not well-studied. The aim of this study was to examine whether inpatients taking serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRI) exhibited reductions in cerebral ventricular volume. Methods: Psychiatric inpatients, diagnosed mainly with depression, substance use, anxiety, and personality disorders, underwent two imaging sessions (Time 1 and Time 2, approximately 4 weeks apart)...

Background: Health care workers (HCW) exposed to COVID-19 risk experiencing psychological distress. Little is known regarding longitudinal perspectives and evolutions of psychological distress within this population. The objective of this study is to extend the results of our previous study to the pandemic's second wave. Method: This prospective cohort study was conducted from May 8, 2020, to January 24, 2021, and includes 787 HCW. Symptoms of anxiety and depression were assessed using the Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)...

Background: Although current treatments for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in war veterans are effective, unfortunately 30-50% still do not benefit from these treatments. Trauma-focused therapies, eg exposure therapy, are primarily based on extinction processes in which the endocannabinoid system (ECS) plays a significant role. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that poor treatment response on trauma-focused therapy due to extinction deficits may be associated with a poorly functioning ECS...

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Background: Headache is a common symptom affecting children and adolescents. The medical literature over the last three decades reveals a variable prevalence and triggers in different countries, regions, circumstances and times. This study aims to assess the prevalence, frequency and quality of headaches in the Lebanese adolescent population under the COVID-19 confinement and study its triggers and relationship to screen time, self-reported anxiety, and sleep. Methods: A cross sectional design was used to collect two survey results by snowball distribution using social media targeting adolescents aged 15 to 17 years of age...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent psychiatric disorder that can result from experiencing traumatic events. Accurate diagnosis and optimal treatment strategies can be difficult to achieve, due to the heterogeneous etiology and symptomology of PTSD, and overlap with other psychiatric disorders. Advancing our understanding of PTSD pathophysiology is therefore critical. While functional connectivity alterations have shown promise for elucidating the neurobiological mechanisms of PTSD, previous findings have been inconsistent...

Background: Trauma and chronic stress are believed to induce and exacerbate psychopathology by disrupting glutamate synaptic strength. However, in vivo in human methods to estimate synaptic strength are limited. In this study, we established a novel putative biomarker of glutamatergic synaptic strength, termed energy-per-cycle (EPC). Then, we used EPC to investigate the role of prefrontal neurotransmission in trauma-related psychopathology. Methods: Healthy controls (n = 18) and patients with posttraumatic stress (PTSD; n = 16) completed 13 C-acetate magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) scans to estimate prefrontal EPC, which is the ratio of neuronal energetic needs per glutamate neurotransmission cycle (VTCA /VCycle )...