Background And Aims: African American smokers are less likely to successfully quit and experience a greater burden of tobacco-related health outcomes than White individuals. There is a profound need to understand factors that impact tobacco cessation among African Americans who are undergoing a quit attempt. This study aimed to examine the within- and between-person associations of risk factors (motivation, self-efficacy, urge, positive affect, negative affect, smoking expectancies, and cigarette availability) with lapse.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Caregivers for spouses with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) experience drastic changes in the marital relationship that may put them at risk for worsening well-being. Perceived partner responsiveness, or feeling cared for, understood, and appreciated by one's spouse, may help mitigate these effects. In this study, we investigated the associations between marital distress, perceived partner responsiveness, and psychological and physiological well-being indicators among ADRD spousal caregivers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRacial inequities in health are vast and well-documented, particularly regarding maternal and infant health. Sleep health, including but not limited to duration and quality, is central to overall health and well-being. However, research has not adequately addressed how racism embedded in structures and systems, in addition to individual experiences, may affect maternal health by impacting sleep.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaintaining healthy cognitive functioning and delaying cognitive decline in cognitively intact and cognitive impaired adults are major research initiatives for addressing dementia disease burden. Music interventions are promising, non-pharmaceutical treatment options for preserving cognitive function and psychological health in older adults with varying levels of cognitive function. While passive, music interventions have attracted considerable attention in the abnormal cognitive aging literature, active, music interventions such as music creativity are less well-studied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Dementia spousal caregivers are at risk for adverse mental and physical health outcomes. Caregiver burden, anticipatory grief, and proinflammatory cytokine production may contribute to depressive symptoms among caregivers. People who report childhood trauma are more likely to have exaggerated stress responses that may also contribute to depressive symptoms in adulthood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Sleep quality is an important health-protective factor. Psychosocial factors, including attachment orientation, may be valuable for understanding who is at risk of poor sleep quality and associated adverse health outcomes. High attachment anxiety is reliably associated with adverse health outcomes, whereas high attachment avoidance is associated with adverse health outcomes when co-occurring with poor self-regulatory capacity, indexed by heart rate variability (HRV).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the context of bereavement, little is known about the mechanisms that differentiate normative adjustment patterns from those that may indicate potential psychopathology. This study aimed to replicate and extend previous work by (1) characterizing the trajectories of depressive symptoms from 3 to 12 months after the loss of a spouse, (2) examining whether (a) childhood maltreatment and attachment style predicted distinct depression trajectories, and (b) different depression trajectories were associated with the risk of prolonged grief at 12 months post-loss. Recently bereaved individuals (N = 175) completed self-report assessments at 3, 4, 6, and 12-months post-loss.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoc Personal Psychol Compass
October 2023
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments issued public health safety measures (e.g., "stay-at-home" ordinances), leaving many people "missing out" on integral social aspects of their own lives.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFinances are a prevalent source of stress. In a sample of 799 nursing home workers measured multiple times over 18 months, we found that higher perceived income inadequacy, the perception that one's expenses exceeds one's incomes, was associated with poorer self-reported mental health indicators and Epstein-Barr Virus antibody titers (a marker of cell-mediated immune function). Perceived income inadequacy predicted outcomes over and above the role of other socioeconomic status variables (objective household income and education).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFollowing a stressful life event, there is considerable variation in how individuals respond and adapt. Multiple models of risk and resilience show that adverse childhood experiences may be associated with an individual's response to stress later in life. While there is considerable support that early adversity can sensitize the stress response system and lead to adverse outcomes later in life, there is mounting evidence that in adolescence and young adulthood, certain biological predispositions to stress may be associated with resilience in the context of subsequent stressors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc ACM Interact Mob Wearable Ubiquitous Technol
September 2022
Passive detection of risk factors (that may influence unhealthy or adverse behaviors) via wearable and mobile sensors has created new opportunities to improve the effectiveness of behavioral interventions. A key goal is to find opportune moments for intervention by passively detecting rising risk of an imminent adverse behavior. But, it has been difficult due to substantial noise in the data collected by sensors in the natural environment and a lack of reliable label assignment of low- and high-risk states to the continuous stream of sensor data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpousal bereavement is one of the most stressful experiences in adulthood. In a sample of 183 widow(er)s, bereaved about three months prior, we examined the intersection of employment, family income, and health outcomes (proinflammatory marker production, perceived stress, and grief symptoms). Bereaved employees had higher levels of monocyte-stimulated interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, chemokine ligands 4, and perceived stress than bereaved retirees.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The loss of a spouse is considered one of the most significant life change-related stressors. Bereaved spouses have significantly increased risk of chronic inflammation, and ultimately greater morbidity and mortality. High levels of proinflammatory cytokines are related to negative health outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
July 2022
(1) Background: Gender differences between men's and women's parenting roles are well-documented as the "second shift". We examined the main effects and interaction of work distress and parenting distress with energy (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCompr Psychoneuroendocrinol
August 2021
The loss of a spouse is a highly stressful event that puts older adults at increased risk for morbidity and mortality. The risk is highest in the first year to 18 months post-loss; nevertheless, widow(er)s, in general, are at heightened risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) related morbidity and mortality, and to a lesser extent, non-CVD related morbidity and mortality. The primary goal of this article is to argue for a perspective that considers diet and emotion-induced autonomic, neuroendocrine, and immune dysregulation, in unison, to understand the mechanisms underlying morbidity and mortality in early widowhood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe death of a spouse is associated with maladaptive immune alterations; grief severity may exacerbate this link. We investigated whether high grief symptoms were associated with an amplified inflammatory response to subsequent stress among 111 recently bereaved older adults. Participants completed a standardized psychological stressor and underwent a blood draw before, 45 min after, and 2 hr after the stressor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Childhood maltreatment increases the risk of depression, especially after experiencing a stressful life event, such as bereavement. Employing emotion regulation strategies can mitigate the impact childhood maltreatment has on depression later in life following the loss of a spouse.
Objective: We evaluated how cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression moderated the impact of childhood maltreatment and depressive symptoms following spousal bereavement.
Accumulating research suggests that stressful life events, especially those that threaten close intimate bonds, are associated with an increased risk of dementia. Grieving the loss of a spouse, whether in the form of caregiving or after the death, ranks among 'life's most significant stressors', evoking intense psychological and physiological distress. Despite numerous studies reporting elevated dementia risk or poorer cognition among spousal caregivers and widow(er)s compared to controls, no review has summarized findings across cognitive outcomes (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe asserts that people who experience ongoing interpersonal stressors and mount a greater inflammatory response to social stress are at higher risk for depression. The current study tested this theory in two adult samples. In Study 1, physically healthy adults ( = 76) who reported more frequent interpersonal tension had heightened depressive symptoms at Visit 2, but only if they had greater inflammatory reactivity to a marital conflict at Visit 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChildhood adversity is associated with a host of mental and physical health problems across the lifespan. Individuals who have experienced childhood adversity (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Spousal bereavement can lead to adverse health outcomes; however, not all widow(er)s experience the same degree of health problems. Thus, it is important to understand the contribution of disparities (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEarly life adversities (ELA), include experiences such as child maltreatment, household dysfunction, bullying, exposure to crime, discrimination, bias, and victimization, and are recognized as social determinants of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Strong evidence shows exposure to ELA directly impacts cardiometabolic risk in adulthood and emerging evidence suggests there may be continuity in ELA's prediction of cardiometabolic risk over the life course. Extant research has primarily relied on a cumulative risk framework to evaluate the relationship between ELA and CVD.
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