Matching Items (45)
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- All Subjects: Depression
- All Subjects: Stress
- Creators: Department of Psychology
Description
The transition from high school to college is associated with considerable life strain for adolescents, including higher reported levels of daily stress and negative affect (NA), and alterations in stress physiology have been linked to poor health. The purpose of this thesis was to use an ecological momentary assessment design to study associations between momentary experiences of negative affect and cortisol levels in a sample of adolescents transitioning to college. I also examined the potential moderating effects of two potential vulnerability or protective factors, alone status and perceived social support from friends. Adolescents provided salivary samples and completed paper-and-pencil diary reports of socioemotional experiences and alone status five times per day for three consecutive weekdays, as well as completed self-report questionnaires on perceived social support from friends. Within-person increases in momentary negative affect were associated with momentary cortisol reactivity. Alone status significantly moderated this association such that the association between momentary negative affect and momentary cortisol levels was only significant when individuals were with others and not when they were alone. Perceived social support from friends did not significantly moderate the within-person associations between negative affect and momentary cortisol levels. The findings add to our understanding of physiological correlates of socioemotional experiences, as well as contexts in which these associations may be exaggerated or attenuated. The findings inform our understanding of potential pathways by which physiological reactivity to socioemotional experiences may affect the health of adolescents as well as how prevention efforts could reduce potential poor health outcomes associated with heightened stress reactivity.
ContributorsKomarnisky, Sydney-Paige Milan (Author) / Doane, Leah (Thesis director) / Knight, George (Committee member) / Luecken, Linda (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of two modes of exercise on depression in adolescents with Down syndrome (DS). Twelve participants randomly completed one of two exercise interventions. The interventions were: 1) Voluntary Cycling (VC), in which participants cycled at their self-selected pedaling rate 2) Assisted Cycling (AC), in which the participants' voluntary pedaling rates were augmented with a motor to ensure the maintenance of 80 rpms. In each intervention, the participant completed three cycling sessions each week for a total of eight weeks. Depression scores did decrease or improved after both AC and VC, but not significantly. There was a greater mean improvement for participants in the AC group than VC when analyzing total score and t-score. Future research will include a greater sample size and control group to reach significant results as well as try and reveal the mechanisms involved in these mental health improvements found after an acute bout of assisted cycling in adolescents with DS.
ContributorsTeslevich, Jennifer Lynn (Author) / Ringenbach, Shannon (Thesis director) / Kulinna, Pamela (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MSBR) is a clinically standardized meditation process that has been shown to facilitate the treatment of a variety of mental and physical disorders. The known efficacy of mindfulness-based stress reduction is derived from research on participants who are defined as unhealthy in some form. The potential benefits of mindfulness-based stress reduction for individuals who are considered to be healthy is under-studied, as less attention has gone into this subject area. Information Measurement Theory is a predictive theory that simplifies reality, and through this logical simplification, allows people to predict and see into the future. The concepts that are central to Information Measurement theory are natural laws, unique conditions, and relationships of unique conditions between the past, present, and future and the event model. This project aims to answer the question of if individuals, who are considered to be healthy, experience the same beneficiary results, that mindfulness-based stress reduction models execute, through the conception and knowledge of Information Measurement Theory. This study aims to compare MBSR and IMT in order to determine the consequences of each on the individual. The purpose of this study is also to highlight the promising success that Leadership Society of Arizona has achieved through the teaching of IMT in leadership courses.
ContributorsPirotte, Genevieve Katherine (Author) / Kashiwagi, Dean (Thesis director) / Kashiwagi, Jacob (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric disorder with poorly understood genetic and environmental factors. An allelic variant of complement component 4 (C4), a protein first identified in innate immune response is strongly associated with schizophrenia. In the brain, activity of C4 leads to dendritic pruning, a process that may be causal in disease progression. Environmental factors, such as early life exposure to significant stressors also associate with increased risk of schizophrenia in later life. My hypothesis is that these factors do not act independently, but rather in tandem to influence disease etiology.
This hypothesis is supported by previous studies demonstrating that stress-induced elevation of glucocorticoids increases the transcription of C4. I propose that activated glucocorticoid receptors directly increase C4 protein expression as a transcription factor activator. Additionally, I propose that activated glucocorticoid receptors inhibit the expression of the transcription factor nuclear factor-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB), thereby leading to decreased expression of the C4 inhibitor CUB and Sushi multiple domains 1 (CSMD1).
Glucocorticoid receptors and C4 are richly expressed in the hippocampus, a region critical in memory consolidation, spatial, and declarative memory. I propose that stress-induced upregulation of C4 activity in the hippocampus promotes excessive synaptic pruning, contributing to specific deficits and hippocampal shrinkage seen in schizophrenia. Stress exposure during fetal development and adolescence likely acts through the proposed mechanisms to increase hippocampal C4 activity and subsequent schizophrenia risk. These mechanisms may reveal novel interactions between environmental and genetic risk factors in the etiology of schizophrenia through complement activation.
This hypothesis is supported by previous studies demonstrating that stress-induced elevation of glucocorticoids increases the transcription of C4. I propose that activated glucocorticoid receptors directly increase C4 protein expression as a transcription factor activator. Additionally, I propose that activated glucocorticoid receptors inhibit the expression of the transcription factor nuclear factor-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB), thereby leading to decreased expression of the C4 inhibitor CUB and Sushi multiple domains 1 (CSMD1).
Glucocorticoid receptors and C4 are richly expressed in the hippocampus, a region critical in memory consolidation, spatial, and declarative memory. I propose that stress-induced upregulation of C4 activity in the hippocampus promotes excessive synaptic pruning, contributing to specific deficits and hippocampal shrinkage seen in schizophrenia. Stress exposure during fetal development and adolescence likely acts through the proposed mechanisms to increase hippocampal C4 activity and subsequent schizophrenia risk. These mechanisms may reveal novel interactions between environmental and genetic risk factors in the etiology of schizophrenia through complement activation.
ContributorsHoegh, Emily Marie (Author) / Orchinik, Miles (Thesis director) / Newbern, Jason (Committee member) / Talboom, Joshua (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
The purpose of our study was to evaluate whether viewing videos of dogs had an effect on the stress response of college students. While there is strong support in the literature for demonstrating the beneficial effect of human-canine interactions on human stress indicators, there is very little to no literature on whether or not this phenomenon translates across a digital medium. We hypothesized that when exposed to a video of golden retriever puppies after a stress-inducing task, an individual would experience an increase in blood pressure recovery rate and a decline in perceived stress. In order to study this, we put together several surveys to test our participants' perceived stress, and we measured blood pressure several times in order to obtain a physiological measure of stress. Additionally, in order to produce a guaranteed stress response in our participants, we gave them 2 minutes to prepare a 4 minute video-recorded speech that they were not made aware of prior to entering the testing facility. After the speech task, the experimental group quietly viewed a pleasant 4 minute video containing imagery of dogs, while the control group sat silently for the same duration of time. During this time, the control group was asked to mentally review their performance and to focus intently on the feelings they experienced while giving their speech. Through these measures we found a significant recovery rate in systolic blood pressure and a trending difference between groups for the decline in negative affect. The data demonstrated that the experimental group had blood pressure levels that were significantly closer to their baseline levels when compared to the control group, whose blood pressure did not decline at the same rate. Additionally, the experimental group experienced a higher level of change in negative affect when asked to self-report their level of stress before the speech task and after the conditional recovery period. Interestingly, these findings can be applied to recent literature suggesting that systolic blood pressure is the most important factor of cardiac health to consider when assessing an individual for risk of heart disease or cardiac arrest. While the sample size of this study was small, the significant reduction in systolic blood pressure within the experimental group could indicate the possible efficacy of utilizing digital media containing imagery of canines as a form of therapy for systolically-hypertensive individuals as a means of managing their condition.
ContributorsDiModugno, Maria (Co-author) / Barbera, Joseph (Co-author) / Luecken, Linda (Thesis director) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
In this creative thesis, I traveled to India and used my month long summer vacation back home to interview people about mental health in India. I talked to a therapist and four students about depression to find out what the situation is in India, contributing factors, experiences and stigma unique to depression among students in India, what the government is doing, and possible solutions or steps that can be taken to help students struggling with mental health problems. I also went to mainstream and special schools to meet special educators who work with differently abled children, occupational therapists, parents of differently abled children, and a student with Asperger’s in Chennai, Tamil Nadu to find out about the stigma surrounding differently abled children and their education path.
My efforts have culminated in the creation of the website mentalhealthinindia.com that can be used as a resource both by people in India as well as those abroad who are curious to learn about the stigma surrounding depression and differently abled children in India.
My efforts have culminated in the creation of the website mentalhealthinindia.com that can be used as a resource both by people in India as well as those abroad who are curious to learn about the stigma surrounding depression and differently abled children in India.
ContributorsVenkatakrishnan, Ranjani (Author) / Koester, Nicole (Thesis director) / Pruitt, Rhonda (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is highly comorbid with mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Previous research suggests difficulties in emotion regulation to be concordant with experiencing these comorbid symptoms. Understanding the neural correlates of emotion regulation in ASD and relationships with mood symptoms could provide insights for effective treatments. We employed an existing functional MRI paradigm to assess neural activation during an emotional regulation task in adults with ASD, and correlate activated regions with self-reported measures of depression and anxiety. We found the following regions to be significantly associated with emotion regulation (family-wise error corrected p<0.05): the bilateral insula, anterior cingulate, middle cingulate, precentral gyrus, angular gyrus, left dorsolateral PFC, right caudate/putamen, and left medial PFC. We found anxiety, but not depression, symptoms were negatively correlated with activation in the anterior cingulate, left insula, and left putamen, and showed a moderate relationship to the amygdala. These results expand current understanding of ASD and emotion regulation and suggest targets for future clinical intervention.
ContributorsHaynes, Caleb River (Author) / Braden, Brittany Blair (Thesis director) / Leslie, Baxter (Committee member) / Mary, Davis (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
In Memory of an Emily is a piece of creative nonfiction and a short film that together detail the author’s experience with mental illness in the collegiate environment. In its 45 pages, Jackman begins to detail the realities of living with depression, anxiety, and anorexia nervosa. The piece includes five sections of writing, including a preface and four portions describing freshman to senior year. Each section endeavors to explore simplistic and purposefully cliché events common in young adult/collegiate life and juxtapose the banal nature of these events with the experience of the mentally ill. Her story endeavors to explore the emotional truths of pain and suffering, revealing that beneath her tender façade lies a very different existence, one tangled in eating disorders, panic attacks, and overwhelming sadness. While maintaining a story-like quality traditional to creative non-fiction, Jackman ventures to warn with a cautionary tale of pathologizing abnormality and exploring the long lasting effects of childhood trauma. Weaving careful storytelling into an exploration of the mentally ill mind, Jackman keeps the reader both terrifyingly close and far away, whispering painful secrets and then desperately running away with the truth. She speaks frankly of all aspects of life, ranging from far more mundane events, such as break ups and college rejection letters, to complicated issues, such as the suicide of her grandfather and her admission into an eating disorder facility. The author attempts to establish a balanced rapport with the reader, recognizing the need to maintain distance and elicit emotion simultaneously. Jackman writes In Memory of an Emily as a heartbreaking but authentic tale, playing with stream of consciousness and paralyzing emotional description. She opens the door and invites the reader into her mind so as to share in the physical and emotional discomfort of the storyteller, but then promptly slams the door once inside.
ContributorsJackman, Emily Deprey (Author) / Soares, Rebecca (Thesis director) / Barca, Lisa (Committee member) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Previous studies have found that the detection of near-threshold stimuli is decreased immediately before movement and throughout movement production. This has been suggested to occur through the use of the internal forward model processing an efferent copy of the motor command and creating a prediction that is used to cancel out the resulting sensory feedback. Currently, there are no published accounts of the perception of tactile signals for motor tasks and contexts related to the lips during both speech planning and production. In this study, we measured the responsiveness of the somatosensory system during speech planning using light electrical stimulation below the lower lip by comparing perception during mixed speaking and silent reading conditions. Participants were asked to judge whether a constant near-threshold electrical stimulation (subject-specific intensity, 85% detected at rest) was present during different time points relative to an initial visual cue. In the speaking condition, participants overtly produced target words shown on a computer monitor. In the reading condition, participants read the same target words silently to themselves without any movement or sound. We found that detection of the stimulus was attenuated during speaking conditions while remaining at a constant level close to the perceptual threshold throughout the silent reading condition. Perceptual modulation was most intense during speech production and showed some attenuation just prior to speech production during the planning period of speech. This demonstrates that there is a significant decrease in the responsiveness of the somatosensory system during speech production as well as milliseconds before speech is even produced which has implications for speech disorders such as stuttering and schizophrenia with pronounced deficits in the somatosensory system.
ContributorsMcguffin, Brianna Jean (Author) / Daliri, Ayoub (Thesis director) / Liss, Julie (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The ability to regulate emotions, attention, and behavior develops early in life and impacts future academic success, social competency, behavioral problems, and psychopathology. An impairment in regulation is known as dysregulation. Past research shows that children of mothers with postpartum depression are more likely to show impairment in regulatory abilities. There is an established link in the literature between family support and maternal depression, which in turn can impact child behavior. However, further research is needed to explore the impact of family support on early childhood dysregulation in the context of maternal depression. Using a sample of 322 Mexican-American, mother-child dyads, two models were examined. Model one hypothesized family support would buffer the effects of maternal depression on child dysregulation at 24 months. Model 2 hypothesized that family support is related to child dysregulation through its effect on maternal depression. Results showed that increased family support was related to more child dysregulation when there were high levels of maternal depression. There was no evidence to support the hypothesis that maternal depression mediated the relationship between family support and child dysregulation.
ContributorsRodrigues, Samantha Jean (Author) / Luecken, Linda (Thesis director) / Benitez, Viridiana (Committee member) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12