Effects of Chronic Academic Stress on Stress Level and Health

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Effects of Chronic Academic Stress on Stress
Level and Health

• Jessica Winslow

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My Individual Major

• Biological and Psychological Perspectives of
  Health and Illness
• Combines courses from the biology, psychology,
  and statistics
• Advisor Professor Dickinson

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Before the Project

• Stress and Health Independent Study last year

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Stress Response

• Adaptive system that allows the body to respond
  to stressors
• Back to homeostasis
• Response to Physical stressor
• Readies the body for action
• Fight or flight
• shuts down unnecessary body functions

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Physiology of Stress Response

• Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis
• Main stress hormone in humans is cortisol

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Benefits of Stress Response

• Physical
• Acute (short lasting stressors)
• Great for escaping a lion

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Negatives of Stress Response

• Activation hinders functioning of systems
  nonessential at that moment
• A high cortisol level is harmful to some tissue
• Not necessarily helpful for chronic psychological
  stress
• Not so great for chronic academic stress

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Illness and Stress Response

• Stress response linked to
• Increased susceptibility to infectious disease
• Hypertension
• Digestive problems
• Tissue damage (i.e. hippocampus)
• Depression

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Pulling Elements of My Major Together with a Study

• Project that encapsulates all elements of my
  major
• Biology-physiological stress response, illness
• Psychology- academic stress, coping mechanisms
• Statistics-analyze study

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Goal of Study

• Investigate chronic academic stress on St. Olaf
  students
• Compare beginning of semester and midterms
• Study
• illness symptoms
• objective stressors
• perceived stress
• coping mechanisms
• cortisol

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1st Semester Preparation

• Research
• Find established scales
• Get advice
• Create Survey
• Order Immunoassay kit for Cortisol
• Test Run
• Get Institutional Research Board approval

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2nd Semester

• Run study
• Analyze saliva samples
• Input and analyze data

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Gender Differences

• Women
• Time point 1 67.5
• Time point 2 68.25
• women higher illness symptoms and objective
  stress but not significant
• women significantly higher perceived stress
• coping styles

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Coping Mechanisms

• Task-oriented, Emotion-oriented,
  avoidance-oriented coping
• Time point 1
• women are more emotional and avoidant
• Task correlated with lower perceived stress
• Emotion correlated with higher perceived stress
  and higher illness symptoms

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Significant Correlations at Both Time Points
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Stress

• Between 2 time points significant increases in
• major school items (plt0.001)
• perceived stress (plt0.05)
• current stress rating (plt0.0001)
• NOT objective stressors

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Mean 4.67 Std dev 1.86
Mean 5.75 Std dev 1.77
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Healthy Habits

• Significantly less weekend and weekday sleep at
  the second time point
• a majority of participants reported normal
  eating, exercising, using tobacco and alcohol,
  socializing at both time points

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Illness Symptoms

• Self report over past 7 days
• Significant increase in illness symptoms (plt0.032)

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Mean 11.45 Std dev 6.79
Mean 13.98 Std dev 10.20
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Cortisol
Who are these outliers?
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ME!

• Acute stress?

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Increase in Illness Symptoms Correlated with
Increased Perceived Stress
Significant Correlations Between Changes of
Measures Between Two Time Points
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Discussion

• Hypothesis
• psychological stress determines the level of
  induced stress response
• induced stress response determines illness
  symptoms
• perceived stress was more strongly correlated
  with severity of illness symptoms than were
  objective measures of stress
• Problem to hypothesis no raised cortisol level
  observed in the current study
• a prolonged increase in cortisol level may not be
  induced by academic stressors
• link between illness symptoms and perceived
  stress observed here is not solely based on
  cortisol level

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Confounding Factors

• Possible confounding factors not controlled in
  these statistics include
• more women than men
• approximately 2 hour time span of saliva sampling
  (circadian rhythm of cortisol secretion)
• stressful conditions may have made subjects more
  aware of their health concerns rather than
  actually producing more
• stressful conditions may lead subjects to make
  less healthy choices

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Future Research

• normalize the circadian rhythm stages
• objective measures of illness symptoms rather
  than self-report
• observe changes in healthy behavior
• more frequent cortisol measurements
• other measures of stress response activation

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The question remains What biological factors
mediate the stress-health link?
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Acknowledgements

• Professor Shelly Dickinson
• Center for Integrated Studies
• Professor Julie Legler
• Professor Anne Walter
• Professor Debby Walser-Kuntz, Carleton College
• Alex Dietz
• David McClure
• And all my participants

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On a more personal note

• Thank you to my family and friends

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Questions?