ABSTRACT
The present study conducted an exploratory examination of the relationship between self-reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and an expanded definition of risk-taking behaviors among 395 veterans at a large Midwestern Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms were associated with elevated rates of substance use, thrill seeking, aggression, risky sexual practices, and firearm possession. Results indicated that suicidal ideation and aggressive driving behavior were among the most frequently reported. The present findings hold significant public health implications and highlight the need to attend to risk-taking behaviors in treatment planning.
Subject(s)
Aggression , Risk-Taking , Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic/diagnosis , Veterans/psychology , Veterans/statistics & numerical data , Adolescent , Adult , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Military Medicine , Prevalence , Sampling Studies , Severity of Illness Index , Social Behavior , Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic/epidemiology , Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic/psychology , Suicidal Ideation , United States/epidemiologyABSTRACT
Maternal stress and anxiety during pregnancy are related to negative developmental outcomes for offspring, both physiological and psychological, from the fetal period through early adolescence. This robust relationship is likely to be partly explained by alterations in fetal neurodevelopmental programming, calling for further examination of neurophysiologically-based cognitive markers that may be related to the altered structure-function relationships that contribute to these negative developmental outcomes. The current investigation examined the relationship between perinatal maternal anxiety and neonatal auditory evoked responses (AERs) to mother and stranger voices. Results indicated that neonates of low-anxiety mothers displayed more negative frontal slow wave amplitudes in response to their mother's voice compared to a female stranger's voice, while neonates of high-anxiety mothers showed the opposite pattern. These findings suggest that neonates of perinatally anxious mothers may demonstrate neurophysiologically-based differences in attentional allocation. This could represent one pathway to the negative psychological outcomes seen throughout development in offspring of anxious mothers.
Subject(s)
Anxiety , Brain/physiology , Evoked Potentials, Auditory/physiology , Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects , Recognition, Psychology/physiology , Acoustic Stimulation , Analysis of Variance , Auditory Perception/physiology , Electroencephalography , Female , Humans , Infant, Newborn , Mother-Child Relations , Mothers , Personality Inventory , Pregnancy , Speech Perception/physiology , Stress, Psychological , VoiceABSTRACT
The present study examined relationships among gender, trait dominance, and cardiovascular reactivity assessed during dyadic social interactions between same-gender and same-ethnicity participants. One-hundred sixty dyads, 76 comprised of African American participants and 84 comprised of European American participants, engaged in three 4-min discussions while their heart rate and blood pressure responses were assessed. All dyads were composed of unacquainted partners. Multilevel modeling for dyadic data revealed that trait dominance was significantly and positively associated with blood pressure reactivity during the discussions, but only among men who interacted with a highly dominant partner. The results of the present study add to the weight of the evidence identifying dominance as a social domain of significance for cardiovascular functioning, particularly among men. Potential reasons for gender-specific patterning are considered.
