Stress (Psychology)

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between green environments and resilience in older adults. It had two aims: 1) to explore the effect of a reflective garden walking program on resilience and three of its related concepts - erceived stress, personal growth initiative, and quality of life - in older adults, and 2) to explore the resilience patterns of older adults engaging in the reflective garden walking intervention. A parallel mixed method design using a quasi-experimental quantitative and a descriptive exploratory qualitative approach was used. Participants engaged in a six week reflective garden walking program. By the end of the program, resilience levels exhibited a slight increase and perceived stress levels a decrease. The qualitative data supported some beneficial effects of the reflective garden walking program, but also indicated that much of the participants' experience of resilience may have been related to the rich social and nature-filled environment in which already they lived. Patterns of resilience that appeared in the data were maintaining a positive attitude, belief in one's self in the face of one's vulnerabilities, woven into the social fabric, purpose and meaning, personal strength, and communities for growing older.

Exclusive breastfeeding for at least 6 months provides numerous infant and maternal benefits. Yet mothers with risk factors, such as lower education, lower socioeconomic status, younger maternal age, planned cesarean birth, and anxiety and depression, are more likely to stop breastfeeding in the early postpartum period. Few studies have focused on perinatal depression as a risk factor for breastfeeding cessation. To tailor effective interventions, nurses must first understand the lived experience of breastfeeding for mothers at risk for perinatal depression.
A descriptive phenomenological study was conducted to elucidate the experience of breastfeeding for mothers with perinatal depression. The study was grounded in Swanson’s middle-range theory of caring. After university Institutional Review Board approval, a purposive sample of 10 women was recruited from various organizations. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, and semistructured, audiorecorded face-to-face or telephonic interviews were conducted. The researcher transcribed the data which was transformed into constituents of the mothers’ lived experience by utilizing Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method.
Five constituents emerged: choosing selflessness, harboring inadequacy, deliberate persevering, discerning meaning, and cherishing intimacy. The constituents embodied the essence of the mothers’ thoughts and feelings connected to breastfeeding. By daily choosing selflessness, mothers consciously decided to breastfeed despite physical or psychological struggles. They often were harboring inadequacy due to ongoing struggles which led to incessant thoughts of maternal incompetence. Yet they successfully breastfed for at least 2 weeks after birth by deliberate persevering. Through breastfeeding, they were discerning meaning to realize their value as mothers. Finally, they reveled in purposeful moments of togetherness with their babies through cherishing intimacy.
The study findings inform recommendations for nursing education, practice, research, and policy. Nursing education must include basic breastfeeding and perinatal mental health knowledge in prelicensure curricula and up-to-date lactation management techniques and perinatal mental health awareness training in continuing education. Practicing maternal-child nurses must provide education and support to mothers about advantages and difficulties of breastfeeding throughout the perinatal period. Future research includes determination of support needs for women with perinatal depression with subsequent development and evaluation of therapeutic actions to promote breastfeeding success.

Previous research has shown that the intrapersonal characteristics (e.g.,
temperament) of children are associated closely with alterations in the functioning of the
hypothalamic-pituitary–adrenal (HPA) stress axis. However, consistently capturing direct
associations between these characteristics and stress reactivity of the HPA axis has, at
times, yielded disparate findings. Thus, using the Rothbart model of temperament
(Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981) as a guide, the main goal of this project was to investigate
and identify intrapersonal characteristics that moderate associations between other
intrapersonal characteristics of the child and stress reactivity during development (e.g.,
trait by trait interactions). Additionally, study variables were assessed for meaningful
associations and, on average differences between those who responded to the stressor
paradigm and those who did not. A sample of 45 male and 37 female students (n=82, M=
9.66 yrs.) from six, fourth and fifth grade classes partook in a mathematically based stressor paradigm administered in the classroom. Salivary cortisol and behavior measures
were collected in two waves over a 7-week period. Several significant results emerged.
Overall, children who responded to the stressor paradigm had significantly higher levels
of traits associated with a more inhibited behavioral style. Further, several meaningful
interactions surfaced in which intrapersonal characteristics of various categories,
including reactive, regulatory, and ambiguous, interacted with one another to predict
stress reactivity. Of note, the majority of the interactions involved self-regulation and
surgency. These two intrapersonal characteristics interacted with several others, helping
to elucidate the unique influences of these intrapersonal characteristics on each other and,
subsequently, stress reactivity of the HPA axis. These results illustrate that interactions
between multiple intrapersonal characteristics should be taken into consideration in the
future when studying the relationships between intrapersonal characteristics and stress
reactivity of the HPA axis.

The overall purpose of this mixed method study was to describe adolescents’
experiences of ease while enduring treatment for cancer. Specifically, the study used
avatar image-guided story-sharing (AIGSS) to explore adolescent sense-of-self,
experiences of feeling uneasy, descriptions of qualities of ease, and best places for
finding ease during treatment. The innovative research approach used in this study
incorporated avatar images representing ‘ease’ in typical environments. By testing a
developmentally relevant approach, AIGSS, to explore ease for adolescents enduring
cancer, this study addressed a pressing need for meaningful approaches to engage
adolescents in health-related dialogue about what matters most.
While 10 qualities captured adolescent ease (beauty, fun, safety, strength,
connectedness, calmness, rest, comfort, independence, and familiarity), connectedness,
strength, fun, rest, and safety were the most significant qualities of ease threaded
throughout stories. Two themes of self-reflected identity emerged: (a) valued personal
qualities (extrinsic/admired) and (b) infused unique demeanors. Three themes described adolescent uneasiness during cancer treatment: (a) persistent uncertainty, (b) fearful
anticipation, and (c) disrupted self. While home was most conducive for ease, personal
meaning was given to the hospital enabling finding ease.
This new knowledge is foundational for nurses who support adolescents during
cancer treatment. This research lays the groundwork to re-define ease as a relevant
outcome of quality nursing care, focusing on positive outcomes rather than catastrophic
ones such as infection and death. Advancing caring science with interactive participative
research enhanced communication with adolescents, having implications for both clinical
research and pediatric oncology nursing practice.

This is the first study to investigate the relationship of perceived stress, religious coping styles, and mental health symptoms in university students within a single, faith- based institution. Students face a variety of stressors that may be directly, indirectly, or not related to the college experience. If these stressors are left unmanaged, there are multiple implications including reduced retention, declines in academic performance, physical health concerns, and mental health symptoms. University personnel are reporting increases in the number and severity of mental health symptoms presented by university students. This study investigated whether religious coping strategies provide a mediating effect on the relationship between stress and mental health symptoms. The sample was comprised of 209 undergraduate students, between the ages of 18-32, from a single faith-based university.

Absence is the thesis exhibition resulting from the culmination of my three years in the graduate program. In this documentation, I outline historical and contextual influences that shape my ceramic practice. I specify that my work is centered on my life and describe how my work has evolved since I first started in the program. In the process I have gathered source material and have explored key points in the theory and history of Minimalism. As I developed the work, I was able to discuss how my work applied to these sources, and where it differed. I ended with introspective installation work that paralleled the themes I was working with at the start of my graduate experience that shows my evolution from being a child continually bounced around from one family member to another, to being the confidant of my mother and holding her darkest secrets, to feeling alone and unloved, to finally beginning to heal and accept who I am.

Mindfulness – nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment - has recently garnered significant attention in psychological literature for decreasing clinical symptoms. Certain personality traits such as emotionality, however, can predict higher levels of anxiety and depression. The present study examines whether mindfulness mediates the relationship between personality traits and perceived stress and depression in nonclinical populations. A total of 321 participants from two samples—American and Japanese undergraduates —self-reported scores on measures of mindfulness, personality, perceived stress and depression. Cross-cultural comparisons following measurement invariance tests also allow for insight into the definition of mindfulness, especially given the Eastern religion origin of mindfulness. Results demonstrate that mindfulness partially mediates the relationships between personality clinical symptoms, particularly for extraversion and conscientiousness. These results can play an important role for developing mindfulness-based treatment and prevention programs and bridge an important gap between Western conceived and Eastern religion mindfulness.

The purpose of this study was to test the effect of the expressive writing and the expressive talking interventions on uncertainty and coping processes in Thai family members of patients in a coma, and to examine changes in positive emotion, negative emotion, and cognitive process word-use over three days. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest, three group design was conducted with 45 Thai family members of patients in a coma who were in the intensive care units (ICU) at a hospital in Thailand. Three ICUs were randomly assigned into groups: the expressive writing, the expressive talking, and the control group. Participants of the expressive writing group (n = 15) were asked to write about their thoughts and feelings following standard guidance for expressive writing, those of the expressive talking group (n = 15) were interviewed with questions guided by the story path approach, whereas those of the control group (n = 15) did not receive any specific interventions. Participants completed the Thai version of the Mishel Uncertainty in Illness Scale-Family Member Form and the Thai version of the revised version of the Ways of Coping Scale before and after the interventions.

This study examined the results of the National Prison Wardens’ Survey to ascertain the levels of job satisfaction, occupational sentiments, and work-related stress among prison wardens and to establish whether these variables differed between male and female respondents. The findings indicated that wardens generally experience high levels of job satisfaction, reflect positive occupational sentiments, and report low levels of work-related stress. Additionally, results from the Chi-square tests and Lambda measures of association indicated that little to no relationship existed between gender and any of the explored variables.

The study investigated the effects of music to reduce anxiety and decrease intubation times in coronary artery bypass graft and valve replacement surgical patients in an acute care hospital. Anxiety can contribute to everything from heightened emotional stress, increased pain, blood pressure changes as well as lethal cardiac dysrhythmia and reduction in peripheral and renal perfusion. Research has shown, music as a therapeutic modality, relieves anxiety and pain in patients before and after surgery. What patients hear during surgery can be a rich source of anxiety. Wearing earphones during surgery will eliminate this source of anxiety. Music is reported to distract patients in an alien environment and provide a comforting and familiar effect in discomforting conditions. Soothing music can produce a hypometabolic response characteristic of relaxation in which autonomic, immune, endocrine, and neuropeptide systems can be altered. Similarly, music produces desired psychological responses and reduction in anxiety and fear.