Researchers from the University of Malaga have created the ‘Inventory of Daily Stressors’, a method aimed at schoolchildren. According to experts, worrying about physical appearance, taking part in numerous extracurricular activities and being alone a lot are some of the factors that increase the risk of suffering from childhood stress.

“The figures endorse the need for specific tools to assess daily stress amongst schoolchildren”, María Victoria Trianes, the main author of the study and professor at the University of Malaga, explains to SINC. That is why her team devised the ‘Childhood Inventory of Daily Stressors’ (IIEC [Spanish acronym]).

The report, published in the Spanish journal Psicothema, lists 25 daily situations in the fields of health, school, family and peer relationships, all relevant to childhood development. The inventory is also validated by other sources such as teaching staff and parents.

The IIEC is linked to school grades and health problems. Some of the most influential factors are worrying about physical appearance, taking part in too many extracurricular activities and being alone a lot. The inventory is also associated with a hormonal indicator (cortisol levels on waking up) and enables ‘socio-emotional change’ in children to be predicted.

“The IIEC provides valuable information for the development of psychoeducational intervention guidelines to improve school interaction and encourage children to develop the appropriate tools to manage daily stress throughout their lives”, states the researcher.

1,094 children (533 boys and 561 girls), aged between 8 and 12 and from 17 different educational institutions across Malaga, took part in the study. “It is important to create tools to assess daily childhood stress, as this is an area which lacks resources specific to these age groups”, Trianes points out.

The assessment of daily stress in childhood has become increasingly important over the last 20 years. Experts claim that stress leads children and teenagers to develop symptoms of depression and anxiety, sleep disorders, eating disorders, disruptive behaviour and academic underperformance. There can also be consequences for their physical health. Therefore “prevention and effective treatment will have positive consequences for mental health and development in childhood and adolescence”, concludes the professor.

Most characteristics of the “Type A” personality are linked to increased work stress. But there’s one important exception, according to a study in the January Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

Leadership is the Type A characteristic associated with reduced job stress a finding that may be useful in designing stress-reduction programs, according to Taina Hintsa and colleagues of University of Helsinki.

The researchers analyzed the relationship between Type A behavior and work stress in 752 Finnish workers. In contrast to previous studies, they broke Type A behavior into four dimensions: leadership, aggression, being “hard-driving,” and eagerness-energy.

High scores for aggression, hard-driving, and eagerness-energy were all associated with high job stress. These three Type A characteristics were also linked to “effort-reward imbalance” a key contributor to work stress.

In contrast, workers who scored high on leadership had lower work stress. High leadership was linked to high work effort, but also to high work rewards. High leadership was also associated with high job control, which may help to reduce work stress.

The Type A personality with characteristics like aggression, time urgency, and competitiveness has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease. Type A behavior may also be a risk factor for high stress on the job. Especially if they feel like they’re not in control, Type A personalities may respond by becoming over-involved in work.

High leadership protects against work stress, the new study suggests. Leadership may be associated with a good balance between job effort and rewards and a higher level of control over work. In contrast, other three Type A characteristics aggression, hard-driving, and eagerness-energy are linked to high work stress and effort-reward imbalance.

These personality characteristics should be considered in designing programs attempting to address work stress, Hintsa and co-authors believe. For example, since leadership increases job control, giving employees a stronger say in work decisions help to reduce job stress.

Scientists have long eyed mutations in a gene known as DISC1 as a possible contributor to schizophrenia and mood disorders, including depression and bipolar disorder. Now, new research led by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests that perturbing this gene during prenatal periods, postnatal periods or both may have different effects in mice, leading to separate types of brain alterations and behaviors with resemblance to schizophrenia or mood disorders.

The findings, reported online Jan. 5 in Molecular Psychiatry, could eventually help researchers treat mental illness in people or even prevent it.

To manipulate DISC1 expression during different periods, the researchers, led by Associate Professor Mikhail Pletnikov, M.D., Ph.D., crafted a novel mouse model in which a mutant form of the gene could be turned off by feeding the animals small amounts of the antibiotic doxycycline in their chow.

The animals could get the drug directly by eating it or through their mothers during gestation. Withdrawing doxycycline turned this gene on. (All the animals also carried the normal DISC1 gene, which wasn’t affected by the drug.)

Using this model, Pletnikov’s team generated four groups of mice: those that expressed mutant DISC1 prenatally (Pre), those that expressed mutant DISC1 postnatally (Post), those that expressed it during both periods (Pre+Post), and those that never expressed it (NO).

When the mice were about 2 months old, the researchers put the animals through a battery of behavioral tests designed to measure characteristics similar to schizophrenia and depression in humans, such as abnormal social interactions and heightened aggression under stress, comparing these animals with “control” animals that didn’t express the mutant gene.

Because previous studies have shown that male mice with mutant DISC1 have such altered traits, the researchers tested male mice in each of the groups by placing them in a cage with a normal male mouse and allowing them to mingle for 10 minutes. They counted various social behaviors, including sniffing, following and attacks. Pletnikov and his colleagues found that the Pre+Post and Post groups spent significantly less time in non-aggressive social interaction with their partners than the mice of the NO group. Those in the Pre+Post group also demonstrated significantly more aggressive attacks on their partners than control mice that did not express mutant DISC1.

To look for behaviors reflecting depression, the researchers gave animals of both sexes in all the groups a forced swim test and a tail suspension test. In both tests, the animals participated in unpleasant activities – being made to swim in a pool, or being lifted by their tails – and were timed for how long they struggled. Mice thought to exhibit depression-like behavior spend more time immobile than non-depressed mice.

Pletnikov’s team found that only female mice of the Post group spent significantly more time immobile in the forced swim test than mice that did not express mutant DISC1. Female mice in the Pre+Post group spent significantly more time immobile in the tail suspension test than control mice . Male mice in each of the groups displayed similar behavior in these tests.

Finally, when the researchers examined the brains of the mice, they found significant differences between animals in different groups. Those in the Pre group had significantly smaller brain volume than the other mice. Mice in the Post and Pre+Post groups had significantly larger lateral ventricles and decreased content of dopamine, a pleasure-producing brain chemical, in the frontal cortex. Both female and male mice in the Pre, Post and Pre+Post groups had fewer neurons that produce GABA, a brain chemical that regulates nerve cell firing, than mice in the NO group.

The researchers say both the behavioral and physiological findings suggest that expressing mutant DISC1 at different time points during fetal or early childhood development can lead to different outcomes. While selective prenatal expression led to smaller brain volumes but mild behavioral effects, pre- and postnatal expression led to behaviors and brain alterations in male mice similar to schizophrenic humans, and postnatal expression produced abnormalities in female mice similar to depression.

The researchers aren’t sure why the animals varied according to sex. However, Pletnikov notes, schizophrenia and depression also vary between the sexes in humans, with schizophrenia more prevalent in males and depression more prevalent in females. He and his team plan to study these sex-related differences in future studies.

The team also plans to try to narrow the time periods in which mutant DISC1 is turned on in their model to study particular stages, such as early postnatal development, sexual maturity, adulthood and aging, since triggers at each of these stages might bring on mental illness.

The goal, says Pletnikov, is to use these findings to develop new therapies to treat psychiatric disorders.

“Right now,” he says, “we cannot treat or reverse all the abnormalities associated with schizophrenia or major mood disorders, but our research gives us hope that we can eventually target some of these abnormalities that are currently considered incurable. If we catch these problems early enough, we may someday be able to prevent schizophrenia or depression from developing.”

A new study shines a light on depression in the workplace, suggesting that psychological stress at the office or wherever people earn their paychecks can make it more difficult for depressed workers to perform their jobs and be productive.

“There is a large economic cost and a human cost,” said study lead author Debra Lerner, Ph.D., director, Program on Health, Work and Productivity, Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies at Tufts Medical Center.

“We need to develop and test programs that directly try to address the employment of people with depression.”

The researchers screened 14,268 adult employees and ultimately compared 286 depressed workers to 193 who were not depressed. They recruited participants between 2001 and 2003 from doctors’ offices.

The study findings appear in the January/February issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion.

In many cases, the depressed employees had problems at work, Lerner said. “They’re often very fatigued and have motivational issues. They also may have difficulty handling the pacing of work, managing a routine, performing physical job tasks and managing their usual workload.”

The findings suggest that there is a link between productivity and an employee’s ability to control his or her work. “The workplace does play an important part,” Lerner said.

Ronald Kessler, a professor in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, said the study findings “are consistent with a growing body of evidence that depression has important adverse effects on work performance, both absenteeism and on-the-job performance.”

Depression has a greater effect on attendance and productivity than the “vast majority” of other health conditions with the exception of musculoskeletal problems and insomnia, he said.

“This evidence has led to the development of several workplace depression screening and treatment programs,” he added. “Evaluations are beginning to show that these programs can be cost-effective when implemented carefully in reducing the indirect workplace costs of depression.”

What to do? When it comes to depressed workers, “we are going to need more ways to help those who want to continue working to be able to do so and sustain their productivity,” Lerner said.

Scientists have for the first time selectively blocked a conditioned fear memory in humans with a behavioral manipulation. Participants remained free of the fear memory for at least a year. The research builds on emerging evidence from animal studies that reactivating an emotional memory opens a 6-hour window of opportunity in which a training procedure can alter it.

“Our results suggest a non-pharmacological, naturalistic approach to more effectively manage emotional memories,” said Elizabeth Phelps, Ph.D., of New York University, a grantee of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Phelps and NIMH grantee and NYU colleague Joseph LeDoux, Ph.D., led the research team that reports on their discovery online Dec. 9, 2009 in the journal Nature.

“Inspired by basic science studies in rodents, these new findings in humans hold promise for being translated into improved therapies for the treatment of anxiety disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.

The results add support to the hypothesis that emotional memories are reconsolidated – rendered vulnerable to being modified – each time they are retrieved. That is, reactivating a memory opens what researchers call “reconsolidation window,” a time-limited period when it can be changed.

“This adaptive update mechanism appears to have evolved to allow new information available at the time of retrieval to be incorporated into the brain’s original representation of the memory,” explained Phelps.

Earlier this year, LeDoux and colleagues exploited this potentially clinically important insight to erase a fear memory in rats. They first conditioned rats to fear a tone by pairing it with intermittent shocks. A day later, the rats were re-exposed to the tone, reactivating the fear memory. They then underwent a process to rewrite the fear, called extinction training, in which the tone was repeatedly presented without shocks.

However, the timing of this extinction training proved critical. Fear of the stimulus was erased only in rats trained within a 6-hour reconsolidation window after re-exposure to the feared tone. Fear responses returned in animals trained after the window closed, when the memory had apparently already solidified.

Normally, extinction training suppresses but does not erase the original fear memory. By first reactivating it – sounding the tone – just prior to extinction training, LeDoux and colleagues permanently erased the fear memory. In the new study, Phelps and colleagues similarly conditioned human participants to fear colored squares by intermittently pairing them with mild wrist shocks.

As with the rats, a day later, the memory was first reactivated by re-exposing participants to the feared squares. A measure of nervous system arousal confirmed that they experienced a fear response. Extinction training – repeated trials of exposure to the colored squares without shocks – followed.

Again as in the rats, a day later, the fear response was banished only in human participants who underwent the extinction training soon after the fear reactivation. Those trained after the 6-hour consolidation window remained afraid of the squares – as did a control group that received extinction training without first experiencing reactivation of the fear memory.

In a follow-up experiment to gauge long-term effects a year later, 19 of the original participants received a potent regimen to re-instate the fear: four shocks followed by presentations of the colored squares.

Remarkably, those who had undergone extinction training within the reconsolidation window were largely spared significant effects. By contrast, those whose training had been delayed 6 hours or who hadn’t experienced fear memory reactivation prior to extinction training experienced significant reinstatement of the fear response.

In a similar experiment, the researchers also confirmed that the fear memory was blocked only for the specific colored square for which fear memory was reactivated prior to extinction training. The effect did not generalize to a differently colored square associated with the shocks. This indicated that memory re-writing during reconsolidation is highly specific and that prior reactivation with the specific stimuli is critical.

“Timing may have a more important role in the control of fear than previously appreciated,” Phelps suggested. “Our memory reflects our last retrieval of it rather than an exact account of the original event.”

Evidence suggests that the behavioral manipulation may work through the same molecular mechanisms as experimental medications under study for quelling traumatic emotional memories.

“Using a more natural intervention that captures the adaptive purpose of reconsolidation allows a safe and easily implemented way to prevent the return of fear,” suggest the investigators.

Recent studies show that one in three Canadians suffer from stress and the number is on the rise. But stress isn’t a new problem.

While the physiological state wasn’t properly named until the 1930s, new research from The University of Western Ontario proves stress has plagued humans for hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years.

The first study of its kind, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, detected the stress hormone cortisol in the hair of ancient Peruvians, who lived between 550 and 1532 A.D.

When an individual is stressed – due to real or perceived threats – cortisol is released into nearly every part of the body, including blood, saliva, urine and hair.

Emily Webb, a PhD candidate at Western in Archaeological Science and the study’s lead author, says the findings are important because it will allow us to better understand how ancient people behaved and felt during their time on Earth but more importantly, to better understand stress and how it affects us today.

“By studying the lives of people using traditional archeological methods like surveying and excavation and combining that with new research techniques like sampling ancient hair specimens, we can get a good picture of what life was like and how our ancestors may have responded to life-changing experiences like illness and disease,” explains Webb.

Analysis of cortisol levels in ancient hair allows researchers to assess stress during a short, but critical, period of an individual’s life. For this pilot study, the Western researchers selected hair samples from 10 individuals from five different archaeological sites in Peru, and analyzed them in segments to determine cortisol levels.

While many of the individuals studied showed high stress levels right before death, Webb noted that a majority also experienced multiple episodes of stress throughout their final years of their life, again proving that much like today, stress was very much apart of ancient Peruvian’s daily lives.

A doctoral thesis carried out at the University of Granada has proved that a mental training based on mindfulness – an emotional self-regulating tool that consists in focusing on what we are doing, thinking about or feeling at every moment – helps to fight against psychological diseases such as anxiety, depression, concern or complaints about health, very common among secondary education teachers, and is very positive for emotional regulation.

This research work has analysed the psycho-physiological mechanisms related to the mindfulness, checking the effectiveness of a training programme that works as an emotional self-regulating tool. Mindfulness is a type of mental training increasingly popular in the U.S., based on the practice of self-awareness and in terms such as attention, awareness and the reference to a specific moment.

The work, developed by Luis Carlos Delgado Pastor and supervised by professor Jaime Vila Castellar, of the department of Personality, Assessment and Psychological Treatment, has confirmed the effectiveness of training mindfulness abilities applying it to two different groups with defined features: a 20-girls sample with high-level concern and a group of 25 secondary education teachers.

Improvement in both groups

Besides, as a consequence of the mental training, both the girls with chronic concern and the teachers improved their subjective rates of anxiety, depression, concern, complaints about health and emotional regulation, together with certain con psycho-physiological such as, for example, cardiac, muscular and respiratory variables.

Delgado Pastor says that, in the light of the results obtained, they have proved the “effectiveness of training mindfulness abilities and human values in the teaching sector as an emotional self-regulating tool, stress prevention for teachers and students, as well as to facilitate the teaching-learning process”.

Accordingly, says the UGR researchers, mindfulness is also useful for persons who are suffering from desadaptative emotional processes, such as chronic concern, anxiety and depression.

Do stressful situations make your blood pressure rise? If so, your phosducin gene could be to blame according to a team of researchers, at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, that has identified a role for the protein generated by the phosducin gene in modulating blood pressure in response to stress in both mice and humans.

The team, led by Lutz Hein and Ulrich Broeckel, generated mice lacking phosducin and found that they had increased baseline blood pressure when compared with normal mice and that they showed enhanced increases in blood pressure in response to post-operative stress. Analysis in humans indicated that a number of phosducin gene variants were associated with certain stress-dependent blood pressure responses. Further, one gene variant in particular was associated with elevated baseline blood pressure. These data led the authors to suggest that phosducin might be a good target for drugs designed to alleviate stress-induced high blood pressure. In an accompanying commentary, however, Guido Grassi, at Clinica Medica, Italy, notes that further studies are needed before the therapeutic implications of these data can really be determined.

A study by researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London has found that depression is as much of a risk factor for mortality as smoking.

Utilising a unique link between a survey of over 60,000 people and a comprehensive mortality database, the researchers found that over the four years following the survey, the mortality risk was increased to a similar extent in people who were depressed as in people who were smokers.

Dr Robert Stewart, who led the research team at the IoP, explains the possible reasons that may underlie these surprising findings: ‘Unlike smoking, we don’t know how causal the association with depression is but it does suggest that more attention should be paid to this link because the association persisted after adjusting for many other factors.’

The study also shows that patients with depression face an overall increased risk of mortality, while a combination of depression and anxiety in patients lowers mortality compared with depression alone. Dr Stewart explains: ‘One of the main messages from this research is that ‘a little anxiety may be good for you’.

‘It appears that we’re talking about two risk groups here. People with very high levels of anxiety symptoms may be naturally more vulnerable due to stress, for example through the effects stress has on cardiovascular outcomes. On the other hand, people who score very low on anxiety measures, i.e. those who deny any symptoms at all, may be people who also tend not to seek help for physical conditions, or they may be people who tend to take risks. This would explain the higher mortality.’

In terms of the relationship between mortality and anxiety with depression as a risk factor, the research suggests that help-seeking behaviour may explain the pattern of outcomes. People with depression may not seek help or may fail to receive help when they do seek it, whereas the opposite may be true for people with anxiety.

Dr Stewart comments: ‘It would certainly not surprise me at all to find that doctors are less likely to investigate physical symptoms in people with depression because they think that depression is the explanation, but may be more likely to investigate if someone is anxious because they think it will reassure them. These are conjectures but they would fit with the data.’

The researchers point out that the results should be considered in conjunction with other evidence suggesting a variety of adverse physical health outcomes and poor health associated with mental disorders such as depression and psychotic disorders.

In light of the findings, Dr Stewart makes suggestions on the focus of future developments in the treatment of depression and anxiety: ‘The physical health of people with current or previous mental disorder needs a lot more attention than it gets at the moment.

‘This applies to primary care, secondary mental health care and general hospital care in the sense that there should be more active screening for physical disorders and risk factors, such as blood pressure, cholesterol, adverse diet, smoking, lack of exercise, in people with mental disorders. This should be done in addition to more active treatment of disorders when present, and more effective general health promotion.’

One in four Australian adults has taken an action that puts their health at risk as a result of the global financial crisis (GFC), according to a new MBF Healthwatch poll.

The results show that lack of job security was particularly hard on families, with almost one in five parents turning up to work ill and close to one in 10 parents sending sick children to school.

Dr Christine Bennett, Chief Medical Officer of Bupa Australia* warns that short-term, risky health actions taken by individuals in an attempt to save money or prove job dedication are likely to have long term negative health outcomes for Australia.

“The poll has revealed that during the past six months, more than two million workers have gone to work ill because they have been concerned about taking a sick day, and a worrying 17 per cent of Australians have avoided or delayed a visit to a GP, dentist or a specialist,” Dr Bennett said.

The results reinforce the findings of Research Australia’s report, Australian Financial Crisis: Implications for Health & Research (Report), which highlights that the fall-out from the GFC goes beyond economics and has major long-term health implications for Australia.

In the Report, which has been produced with the support of Bupa Australia, health policy makers are being urged to prepare for increases in obesity, mental illness, chronic health conditions, and alcohol and drug misuse.

“The health impact of the GFC has largely been overshadowed by the focus on the economy,” Research Australia Chief Executive Officer, Rebecca James explained. “However, the health consequences may be felt long after the economy turns around.”

The ground-breaking independent Report, which features the views of some of Australia’s leading experts in health, the economy, government and society, has revealed that the negative health effects of the GFC include:

* An increase in psychological distress of both employed and unemployed Australians;

* An increase in the numbers of long term unemployed who are at risk of long term disadvantage, which may be characterised by lower health status;

* Health and other support services will be stretched.

Dr Bennett, who recently chaired the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, commented that the Report is a timely reminder that Australia needs a health system that is able to respond to unexpected events such as recession.

“Australia’s continued investment in research will be vital to the development of effective health and social policy to ensure we are better prepared for the future,” she added.

To download a copy of the report, visit http://www.researchaustralia.org or http://www.mbf.com.au/wellness.

The Research Australia independent report, Australian Financial Crisis: Implications for Health & Research, produced with the support of Bupa Australia and the National Health & Medical Research Council, looks at the research evidence on the health and social impacts of economic downturn and features the views of some of Australia’s leading experts in health, the economy, government and society.

The MBF Healthwatch poll is a nationally representative poll of 1,100 Australians aged 16 and over conducted by Galaxy Research by telephone on the weekend of November 6-8, 2009.