Stress

But new research finds that daily exposure to politics can cause chronic stress. Disconnecting from the hectic news cycle has its own repercussions, however – strategies aimed at avoiding those negative emotions might result in becoming less politically engaged.

Brett Ford

“The stress of daily politics poses an unfortunate dilemma,” says Brett Ford, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at U of T Scarborough, who co-authored the study with Matthew Feinberg, an associate professor of organizational behaviour at the Rotman School of Management. “It seems that people who are better able to deal with the daily stress of politics are also less likely to be politically involved.”

The research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, surveyed more than 1,000 Americans after the 2016 U.S. presidential election as they experienced daily political events such as statements from the President, laws debated in Congress and conflicts with foreign countries. Participants, who included Democrats, Republicans and Independents, were asked about how these events made them feel, how they managed those emotions and how motivated they felt to take political action such as donating, volunteering and contacting their representatives.

Matthew Feinberg

In additional experiments, another group of participants watched clips of popular political television programs such as Tucker Carlson Tonight and The Rachel Maddow Show before being surveyed. Some participants were asked to just respond naturally to the programs, while others were asked to use different strategies to help them regulate their emotions during the clips – including distraction and cognitive reappraisal.

Ford, director of U of T's Affective Science & Health Laboratory, says cognitive reappraisal is a type of coping strategy that can help reduce stress or anxiety by reinterpreting or thinking about something in a different way – by downplaying its significance, for example. Distraction, on the other hand, involves avoiding thinking about the content altogether.

“Both of these strategies can be effective ways to reduce negative emotions. If you can limit your exposure to upsetting information, that helps. If you can change what the information means to you, that also helps,” she says.

The researchers found the strategies were effective in lowering negative emotions, and while that predicted greater well-being, it also meant participants were less likely to take action.

Ford, whose research looks at how people manage their emotions, says a daily dose of politics seems to share the same features as other forms of chronic stress in that it’s something people face regularly and feel there is very little they can do about it.

“It’s perfectly reasonable to want to protect yourself in the face of chronic stress, but we also need to understand the potential drawbacks of avoiding negative emotions, which is that people might be less likely to take action to change the systems that caused those emotions in the first place,” Ford says.

Ford recommends a few strategies for those wanting to stay politically engaged without jeopardizing their mental and physical well-being in the process – including emotional acceptance, or the idea of staying in touch with your emotions rather than immediately trying to get rid of them. This might involve viewing emotions as a valid and natural response to a stressful situation. This response, according to the researchers, tends to predict better mental health without coming at the cost of taking action.

Study co-author Feinberg says the research raises the question about whether people should avoid political news altogether to prevent stress.

“Our data suggests that if you are able to disconnect, you are going to feel better – but you may become less engaged. This is a difficult dilemma to manage, and it can be hard to strike a good balance,” he says.

The researchers say getting stressed over politics is nothing new and has typically been studied by looking at how people respond when the party they support loses an election. Their new research, on the other hand, reveals the impact of day-to-day political events and suggests that politics might be a chronic stressor in people’s lives.

“It underscores the far-reaching influence politicians and policymakers have beyond the formal powers they are endowed with,” Ford says.

The research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

A harried life: U of T researchers study stress in snowshoe hares, apply it to humans

ullahnor — Tue, 02 May 2017 16:31:33 +0000

A harried life: U of T researchers study stress in snowshoe hares, apply it to humans ullahnor Tue, 05/02/2017 - 12:31

Don Campbell

Author legacy

Don Campbell

Topic

Pretty much everything in the boreal forest is trying to eat the snowshoe hare.

It's preyed upon by Canadian lynx, foxes, coyotes and various birds. Red squirrels and Arctic ground squirrels even kill its babies.

It’s no wonder that, with grim odds of survival, the snowshoe hare experiences stress. U of T Scarborough researchers are looking at the role of stress in snowshoe hares and what traits baby hares inherit from their stressed-out moms.

They're looking at whether stress triggers programming effects or changes in gene function for hare offspring, and they're hoping the hares may provide some answers for stressed-out humans and their babies.

“The idea is that if this effect happens in snowshoe hares, it may also be at work in other organisms,” says Rudy Boonstra, a professor of biology at U of T Scarborough.

Researchers work out of the Kluane Lake Research Base in Yukon without electricity and running water while they study snowshoe hares

Boonstra has been doing field research in Canada’s north for more than 40 years and helped co-author a comprehensive book on the boreal forest ecosystem. In the early 1980s, he started thinking about the role stress plays in natural environments, particularly in how ecosystems are organized.

Snowshoe hares followed a somewhat predictable 10-year population cycle so they made good candidates to study the indirect effects of stress, Boonstra says.

“The evidence up until that point was that predators were calling the shots,” he says. “Once the hare population was abundant, predators were critical in driving down their numbers.”

During the decline phase of the population cycle, which lasts about two to three years, pretty much every snowshoe hare dies at the “tooth or talon” of a predator, says Boonstra. So the question became whether the hares are smart enough to know that a predator was likely to kill them.

“If you look at the stress levels they’re experiencing, clearly, they do,” he says.

Not only do hares show signs of stress in their blood and energy levels, that stress also influences how they reproduce. Past research in Boonstra’s lab has found that stress experienced by mothers can be inherited by their offspring. What’s more, during periods of very high predation, which happens at the peak of the hare population cycle, the number of litters per summer begins to decline.

“You would think they would be breeding like mad since they’re being killed like mad, but in fact it’s the opposite,” he says. “The fear reduces reproduction.”

Biology Professor Rudy Boonstra near Kluane Lake Research Station in Yukon (photo courtesy of Rudy Boonstra)

Boonstra is part of a larger team affiliated with U of T Scarborough’s Centre for the Neurobiology of Stress and the Centre for Environmental Epigenetics and Development that looks at how the brain and nervous system are affected by stress.

He is trying to determine if there are programming effects that somehow get encoded in hare offspring. In other words, do mothers during intense periods of high predation pass something on, and are their offspring fundamentally different than those whose mothers didn’t experience the same levels of stress?

And, he wonders, are there lessons for humans, too?

“A pregnant mother during war time doesn’t know if she will survive so she’s experiencing an enormous amount of anxiety,” he says. “We want to know whether that anxiety passes through the placenta, and if so, does it program the child in a certain way.”

Sophia Lavergne, a PhD researcher at U of T Scarborough, is also studying snowshoe hares. Affiliated with Associate Professor Patrick McGowan's epigenetics lab, she's taking a deeper look at the long-term effects of stress on showshoe hares.

Sophia Lavergne, a PhD student at U of T Scarborough, is studying snowshoe hares to explore the long-term consequences of stress (photo courtesy of Sophia Lavergne)

She travels to the Kluane Lake Research Station in Yukon each year – for two weeks during the winter and four months during the summer – to study what baby snowshoe hares inherit from their moms.

“We know a lot about stress in the lab, and it’s always assumed to be negative. But, a lot of this stress may be preparatory for the hares,” she says, adding that it may help offspring adapt for life in a harsh environment. “It’s really important to test this in a natural system where there is a host of different stressors like fluctuating temperatures, predators, food scarcity and other challenges in the environment.”

How supervisors can help – or hurt – your recovery from work-related stress: U of T research

lavende4 — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 11:58:11 +0000

How supervisors can help – or hurt – your recovery from work-related stress: U of T research

lavende4 Mon, 10/17/2016 - 07:58

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John Trougakos: “Supervisors have to support their employees’ recovery from work” (photo by Ken Jones)

Don Campbell

Author legacy

Don Campbell

Topic

Breaking Research

UTSC

Stress

Rotman School of Management

U of T Scarborough

Supervisors play an important role in helping support employees who are recovering at home from work-related stress – but they must tread carefully, new research from John Trougakos shows.

That's because employees who have a good relationship with their supervisors may worry too much about letting their boss down, says the University of Toronto Scarborough's Trougakos, an expert on organizational behaviour.

“There is more than one strategy to recover from work-related stress,” Trougakos says. “We wanted to look at how these different strategies function together, to what extent people are using them, and the role supervisors play in helping employees recover from stress.”

An associate professor with U of T Scarborough’s department of management and the Rotman School of Management, Trougakos co-authored the study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Researchers asked more than 400 employees to rate five work-recovery experiences. These experiences included psychological detachment from work, relaxation, engaging in hobbies, having control over how their time is spent away from work, and thinking about future work events.

Supervisors were also asked to rate how supportive they were of their employees' recovery at home as well as the quality of leader-member exchange, which evaluates the relationship supervisors have with their employees.

One of the biggest surprises was the finding that when supervisors had a higher quality relationship with an employee, that employee was less likely to recover at home.

“Although having a good, supportive relationship with your supervisor is important, our work suggests that these employees may feel an obligation to ‘bring work home’ in order to not let their supervisors down,” says Allison Gabriel, assistant professor at the University of Arizona Eller College of Management and lead author on the study.

“It’s a cautionary tale,” adds Trougakos.

“Supervisors have to support their employees’ recovery from work because if they don’t that employee will always be thinking about work even outside of the workplace.”

He adds it’s critical for employees to detach from work and recover adequately or there can be long-term consequences for their long-term health and well-being.

It also doesn’t help that modern technology is conspiring to make it more difficult for employees to detach from work. Trougakos says supervisors should be mindful of sending a late-night email because there’s a good chance their employee will see it pop up on their cell phone.

“The employee will either respond to the email or it will be on their minds when they’re trying to unwind and get to sleep,” he says, adding that it’s a better idea to set the email on a timer to go out first thing in the morning.

The study also found that when supervisors actively support their employees’ recovery from work it has a positive outcome not only on employee health and well-being, but also their productivity at work.

Trougakos says work-recovery starts at the top of an organization and depends on how its work culture is defined.

“If employees are not taking the time to reduce stress, recover from work and be healthy, it will end up costing organizations more money in the long run through burnout, sick leave, absenteeism and turnover,” he says.

“If they are healthy, employees will also be more productive and this will make the company money. Not to mention employees will be happy, which is also important.”

U of T research is helping adolescent athletes cope with stress

lavende4 — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 16:26:01 +0000

U of T research is helping adolescent athletes cope with stress

lavende4 Tue, 09/20/2016 - 12:26

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A high school soccer game: adolescent athletes often experience stress (Photo by Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Katie Babcock

Author legacy

Katie Babcock

Topic

Breaking Research

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

If your adolescent athlete has a difficult soccer game, do you tell them not to worry about it? Or do you suggest they speak to their coach for tips on how to improve? How do you know if your words of wisdom are helping or harming?

Over the years these questions have plagued many parents, but now researchers from U of T’s Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education are finding ways for parents to help their children cope with sport-related stress. Their findings were recently published in the International Journal of Sport Psychology.

“We’ve found that the things parents say and do have an impact on the way athletes deal with stress in sport,” says assistant professor Katherine Tamminen, lead author of the study. “When parents talk directly to their child about active coping in sport, the athlete is more likely to use those strategies to deal with stress.”

When athletes use active coping, including practicing their sport skills or asking a coach or teammate for help, they’re more likely to enjoy their sport and improve their performance. These skills can also translate into future success – adolescence is a key time when athletes are developing coping patterns and these techniques can reduce anxiety when facing stress in school and at work.

Being able to effectively manage stress depends on choosing the right strategy for the right situation – sometimes it’s best to put in extra effort to deal with a problem, but in other cases it can help to take a step back from a problem. “It’s important for parents to help athletes find ways to develop their own solutions to solve their problems rather than telling them what to do or that a problem isn’t important.”

During the study 85 pairs of athletes and parents completed online surveys. Athletes reported levels of parental pressure or support and how they coped with stress, and parents described the type of advice they had given to their children about dealing with stress in sport.

Tamminen’s research, which is supported by the Connaught New Investigator Award, has shown that the foundation to helping athletes develop coping skills is for parents to establish a positive, supportive relationship with their child. When young athletes feel pressure from their parents, they’re more likely to avoid difficult situations and not deal with the stress effectively.

“If an athlete didn’t perform well and their team lost, they probably already feel pretty bad about it,” says Tamminen. “It’s important to give the athlete some time to think things through and allow them some control over how and when they talk about their performance and to help them see things in a broader perspective.”

Undergraduate student Kristi Riseley, former captain of the Varsity Blues women’s hockey team, agrees.

“At the beginning of my university athletics career I wanted more ice time, so I would vent to my parents. They encouraged me to talk to my coach and told me to not be afraid to ask questions and ask for feedback. That was great advice because then I knew what I could do to improve.”

In the fall, Tamminen and her team are delivering a coping intervention workshop for parents and athletes to test the recommendations they have developed.

“We’re really excited to apply our research to real life situations and give parents the skills they need to help their children,” says Tamminen. “Parents are such a strong influence on young athletes and through our research we want to improve athletes’ experiences and set them up for future success.”

PTSD: helping veterans and first responders cope

sgupta — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 10:52:22 +0000

PTSD: helping veterans and first responders cope sgupta Thu, 12/05/2013 - 05:52

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Members of the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry take part in a training exercise (photo by U.S. Pacific Command via Flickr)

Elaine Smith

Author legacy

Elaine Smith

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research

Global

Post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and the challenges of serving in the military or as a first responder are in the news these days, with defence officials investigating recent suicides of Canadian soldiers.

For researchers Judith Andersen and Konstantinos Papazoglou of the University of Toronto, stress- and health-related conditions such as PTSD are top of mind all day, every day.

Andersen, an experimental psychologist and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at U of T Mississauga, and Papazoglou, a PhD candidate and Vanier scholar she supervises, are busy exploring how first responders, such as police and emergency response teams, cope with the continued stress of their work.

“Stress can affect a person’s physical health and functioning, even if they are not diagnosed with PTSD,” said Andersen. “PTSD refers to a specific cluster of symptoms, but many other people suffer from stress-related health problems even without the condition.”

Her previous research, done in the United States, showed that young Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans with PTSD were exhibiting symptoms of heart disease and other ailments usually seen in much older people. This research led her to focus on the mind-body connection among first responders and other individuals exposed to trauma.

“We are now developing resilience and health interventions to help people who have experienced severe or chronic stress,” said Andersen. “Evidence-based research shows that we can reduce mental and physical health symptoms associated with stress by applying positive psychological resilience techniques.”

The pair work in Andersen’s HART (Health Adaptation Research on Trauma) Lab, where they are developing training programs to address both the psychological and physiological aspects of stress to prevent its negative effects from blossoming into long-term health problems.

“We all need a robust stress response. When we face a threat, the body responds by going into fight-or-flight mode,” said Andersen. “This includes a host of physiological responses such as an increase in heart rate, digestion stops, blood flow changes, and we become less sensitive to pain. This is a normal and healthy response.

"However, with chronic stress this response may become disrupted and we may not be able to mount enough of a response, or the response is activated too often or we are unable to calm down afterward. All of these maladaptive responses can lead to health issues.”

Andersen and Papazoglou are able to show first responders how their bodies react to stress in the moment by using inexpensive equipment that displays their heart rate, respiration and other key physiological indicators.

“Many individuals need tangible data to believe and understand what is happening during stress,” said Papazoglou, who is a former police officer. “Using this simple equipment, they can instantly see their bodies’ reactions.

“Our aim is to have this training incorporated into the curriculum for first responders.”

Given the portability of their equipment, the researchers offer a suite of interventions in field settings, such as mindfulness, breathing exercises and biofeedback. Some of the techniques improve physiological control and enhance job performance during stress and others help the body to return to a calm state following stress. By practicing these strategies for even 10 minutes day, adaptive responses to stress become more automatic, even during a traumatic incident, Andersen said.

“That’s why incorporating the physiological component to our stress management training is so important,” said Andersen.

She noted that it is important to recognize that although these interventions reduce the likelihood that mental and physical health conditions will occur following severe stress, there still are situations that may overwhelm a person.

“Even when the best proactive prevention trainings are practiced people do have limits and a breaking point. That is why a component of our training is focused on removing stigma against seeking counselling or other occupational assistance when it is needed.”

This winter, Andersen and Papazoglou are launching a trial study of their interventions with first responders in Europe, to be followed by studies in Canada and the United States.

“Our goal is to show that this works, both with individuals who are new to the profession and those who have been out in the field for a long time,” said Andersen.

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Stress

Researchers find a daily dose of politics leads to stress – but avoiding it can hinder civic engagement

A harried life: U of T researchers study stress in snowshoe hares, apply it to humans

Read more about Lavergne's research

How supervisors can help – or hurt – your recovery from work-related stress: U of T research

U of T research is helping adolescent athletes cope with stress

PTSD: helping veterans and first responders cope