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The connection between emotional states and physical health has attracted widespread attention. The emotional stress assessment can help healthcare professionals figure out the patient's engagement toward the diagnostic plan and optimize the rehabilitation program as feedback. It is of great significance to study the changes of physiological features in the process of emotional change and find out subset of one or several physiological features that can best represent the changes of psychological state in a statistical sense. Previous studies had used the dierences in physiological features between discrete emotional states to select feature subsets. However, the emotional state of the human body is continuously changing. The conventional feature selection methods ignored the dynamic process of an individual's emotional stress in real life. Therefore, a dedicated experimental was conducted while three peripheral physiological signals, i.e., ElectroCardioGram (ECG), Galvanic Skin Resistance (GSR), and Blood Volume Pulse (BVP), were continuously acquired. This paper reported a novel feature selection method based on emotional state transition, the experimental results show that the number of physiological features selected by the proposed method in this paper is 13, including 5 features of ECG, 4 features of PPG and 4 features of GSR, respectively, which are superior to PCA method and conventional feature selection method based on discrete emotional states in terms of dimension reduction. The classification results show that the accuracy of the proposed method in emotion recognition based on ECG and PPG is higher than the other two methods. These results suggest that the proposed method can serve as a viable alternative to conventional feature selection methods, and emotional state transition deserves more attention to promote the development of stress assessment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Sports injuries in athletes can lead to negative emotional responses in terms of anger, anxiety, confusion, and sadness. Severe injuries can be understood as a stressful life event with increased levels of psychological distress, but injury assessment and rehabilitation typically focus on somatic symptoms. Objective: The primary aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of depression and emotional stress and to measure self-rated health in regular exercisers presenting to a sports medicine clinic with musculoskeletal injury. The secondary aim was to identify psychosocial factors associated with depression in injured exercisers and the potential need for psychological counseling. Design: A cross-sectional survey study. Setting: A sports medicine clinic for injuries of the foot, knee, or shoulder. Participants: Regular exercisers with present injuries (N = 694) and exercisers without injuries (N = 494). Regular exercisers were defined as those undertaking moderate exercise at least once a week. Intervention: A questionnaire survey completed on paper by patients in a sports medicine clinic and a web-based version completed by online sports communities. Main Outcome Measures: Participants completed the Major Depression Inventory, Perceived Stress Scale, health-related quality of life, and questions on sociodemographics, exercise habits, and injury history. Results: Symptoms of depression were reported by 12% of injured exercisers and 5% of noninjured controls (P <.001). Clinical stress was found in 30% of injured exercisers and 22% of controls (P =.002), and the EQ-5D-5L Visual Analog Scale score was lower for injured (69 [SD = 19]) than noninjured exercisers (87 [SD = 13], P <.001). Injured exercisers with symptoms of depression reported high stress levels and impaired daily functioning, were younger, and were more likely to have over 10 days injury-related work absence. Conclusions: The authors recommend psychological assessment of exercisers attending a sports medicine clinic for musculoskeletal injury and a supplemental clinical psychological interview for suspected depression or stress-related psychopathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although there are many interventions to support caregivers, SMS text messaging has not been used widely. Objective: In this paper, we aimed to describe development of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Annie Stress Management SMS text messaging protocol for caregivers of veterans, its pilot test, and subsequent national rollout. Methods: The stress management protocol was developed with text messages focusing on education, motivation, and stress-alleviating activities based on the Resources for Enhancing All Caregivers Health (REACH) VA caregiver intervention. This protocol was then tested in a pilot study. On the basis of the pilot study results, a national rollout of the protocol was executed and evaluated. Caregivers were referred from VA facilities nationally for the pilot and national rollout. Pilot caregivers were interviewed by telephone; national rollout caregivers were sent a web-based evaluation link at 6 months. For both evaluations, questions were scored on a Likert scale ranging from completely disagree to completely agree. For both the pilot and national rollout, quantitative data were analyzed with frequencies and means; themes were identified from open-ended qualitative responses. Results: Of the 22 caregivers in the pilot study, 18 (82%) provided follow-up data. On a 5-point scale, they reported text messages had been useful in managing stress (mean score 3.8, SD 1.1), helping them take care of themselves (mean score 3.7, SD 1.3), and making them feel cared for (mean score 4.1, SD 1.7). Texts were easy to read (mean score 4.5, SD 1.2), did not come at awkward times (mean score 2.2, SD 1.4), were not confusing (mean score 1.1, SD 0.2), and did not cause problems in responding (mean score 1.9, 1.1); however, 83% (15/18) of caregivers did not want to request an activity when stressed. Consequently, the national protocol did not require caregivers to respond. In the national rollout, 22.17% (781/3522) of the eligible caregivers answered the web-based survey and reported that the messages had been useful in managing stress (mean score 4.3, SD 0.8), helping them take care of themselves (mean score 4.3, SD 0.8) and loved ones (mean score 4.2, SD 0.8), and making them feel cared for (mean score 4.5, SD 0.8). Almost two-thirds (509/778, 65.4%) of the participants tried all or most of the strategies. A total of 5 themes were identified. The messages were appreciated, helped with self-care, and made them feel less alone, looking on Annie as a friend. The caregivers reported that the messages were on target and came when they were most needed and did not want them to stop. This success has led to four additional caregiver texting protocols: bereavement, dementia behaviors and stress management, (posttraumatic stress disorder) PTSD behaviors, and taking care of you, with 7274 caregivers enrolled as of February 2022. Conclusions: Caregivers reported the messages made them feel cared for and more confident. SMS text messaging, which is incorporated into clinical settings and health care systems, may represent a low-cost way to provide useful and meaningful support to caregivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

College students occupy a socially constructed transitional space between childhood and traditional adulthood that may generate unique risks for them during disasters. Yet, few disaster research studies focus specifically on college students. Using data derived from in-depth, qualitative interviews six to eight months following the 2016 Louisiana Flood, this paper explores college students' perspectives on how the flood affected their educational experience. The students described attendance issues, course schedule changes, grade fluctuations, and changes in motivation. These impacts were often indirectly related to the flood, and varied based on the amount of damage that they or their families experienced, as well as secondary effects including emotional stress, living arrangements, socioeconomic status, and connection with family during recovery. This research exposes the need for further studies on how disasters within college students' families may reverberate through the students' educational experiences and potentially affect their life trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Archives of Hellenic Medicine / Arheia Ellenikes Iatrikes is the property of Athens Medical Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The type D personality construct was originally developed in Belgian with a cardiovascular disease patients, but later evidence began to emerge that this construct is equally applicable to cardiovascular disease patients of other nationalities, including those in countries such as Denmark, Germany, Hungary and Italy. The study aims to highlight the potential role of personality as a determinant of emotional distress in patients with cardiovascular disease. The paper brings additional information to studies already existing in other countries, personality type D being a psychological risk factor in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voiding behavior can be quite sensitive to emotionally traumatic events. Emotional and psychological stress or anxiety are intimately associated with disorders of bowel and bladder function. The exact pathophysiologic mechanism remains unknown. This paper will review the current understanding of the relationship between psychological stress and overactive bladder symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reflective paper talks exclusively about the experiences of a person and the learning that is derived from it. This paper gives a detailed insight into the experiences of self before, during and after the pandemic. The Psychological impact of the Covid and the aftermath of the Covid is discussed as well. The issues are looked at from three perspectives – the student perspective, Staff perspective and the institution perspective as well. This paper is more of a reflection of how a teacher has handled the different situations before Covid, during Covid and post Covid as well. As a teacher I have had the opportunity to handle many different situations, particularly during the COVID period. It was in fact an eye opener, an answer to many questions about the adoption of various methodologies during the given time period. Since the start of Covid A Reflective report on the previous academic year and what I was able to do through the year will help me to analyze what I have done and how I can proceed further to develop a better teacher in me.

Background: This paper proposes a new emotional stress assessment system using multi-modal bio- signals. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is the reflection of brain activity and is widely used in clinical diagnosis and biomedical research. Methods: We design an efficient acquisition protocol to acquire the EEG signals in five channels (FP1, FP2, T3, T4 and Pz) and peripheral signals such as blood volume pulse, skin conductance (SC) and respiration, under images induction (calm-neutral and negatively excited) for the participants. The visual stimuli images are selected from the subset International Affective Picture System database. The qualitative and quantitative evaluation of peripheral signals are used to select suitable segments of EEG signals for improving the accuracy of signal labeling according to emotional stress states. After pre-processing, wavelet coefficients, fractal dimension, and Lempel-Ziv complexity are used to extract the features of the EEG signals. The vast number of features leads to the problem of dimensionality, which is solved using the genetic algorithm as a feature selection method. Results: The results show that the average classification accuracy is 89.6% for two categories of emotional stress states using the support vector machine (SVM) . Conclusion: This is a great improvement in results compared to other similar researches. We achieve a noticeable improvement of 11.3% in accuracy using SVM classifier, in compared to previous studies. Therefore, a new fusion between EEG and peripheral signals are more robust in comparison to the separate signals . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional and physical stress can cause various health problems. In this paper, we used tissue blood oxygen saturation (StO2), a newly proposed physiological signal, to classify the human stress. We firstly constructed a public StO2 database including 42 volunteers subjected to two types of stress. During the physical stress experiment, we observed that the facial StO2 right after the stress can be either increased or decreased comparing to the baseline. We investigated the StO2 feature combinations for the classification and found that the average StO2 values from left cheek, chin, and the middle of the eyebrow can provide the highest classification rate of 95.56%. Comparison with other stress classification method shows that StO2 based method can provide best classification performance with lowest feature dimension. These results suggest that facial StO2 can be used as a promising features to identify stress states, including emotional and physical stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stress related to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic may have caused substantial changes in eating behaviors, and may have been associated with emotional eating, especially in female individuals. The aim of the present study was to analyze the association between stress perceived during the COVID-19 pandemic and emotional eating in girls, within the third phase of the Polish Adolescents' COVID-19 Experience (PLACE-19) Study. A nationwide sample of 818 Polish female adolescents, aged 15–20, was gathered. The adolescents were recruited to the study based on a random quota sampling procedure. Using a computer-assisted web interview (CAWI) survey, participants filled out the Emotional Eating Scale Adapted for Children and Adolescents (EES-C) to assess the urge to cope with negative emotions by eating, and the Adolescent Stress Questionnaire (ASQ) to assess perceived stress. Additionally, the data concerning body mass, height, as well as body mass change during the COVID-19 pandemic were verified. The groups most susceptible to emotional eating were excessive body mass female adolescents, those who gained weight during the COVID-19 pandemic and those experiencing high stress levels while facing negative emotions. In order to plan effective therapeutic interventions dealing with the issue of emotional eating, both psychological therapy and dietary strategy tailored to the individual should be considered for the indicated susceptible groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Synesis is the property of Synesis and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Stress-induced cardiomyopathy (SIC), also known as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, is characterized by severe but potentially reversible regional left ventricular wall motion abnormalities, ie, akinesia, in the absence of explanatory angiographic evidence of a coronary occlusion. The typical pattern is that of an akinetic apex with preserved contractions in the base, but other variants are also common, including basal or midmyocardial akinesia with preserved apical function. The pathophysiology of SIC remains largely unknown but catecholamines are believed to play a pivotal role. The diverse array of triggering events that have been linked to SIC are arbitrarily categorized as either emotional or somatic stressors. These categories can be considered as different elements of a continuous spectrum, linked through the interface of neurology and psychiatry. This paper reviews our current knowledge of SIC, with focus on the intimate relationship between the brain and the heart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern world is full of difficulties. Teaching is a mentally and physically demanding profession. Occasionally teaching becomes stressful for the teachers. Workplace stress has become more prevalent in the teaching profession, owing to rising occupational demands and economic difficulties on an individual. Keeping in view the importance, a scale is developed to measure the teachers' occupational stress, to create a better working environment for teachers of schools. Firstly, 47 items were generated from literature review on physical stress, social stress, emotional stress, and cognitive stress. Psychologists and academics were approached for their professional judgement on the validity of the items. During validation process two items were excluded. Remaining items were 45. The questionnaire was distributed to 1046 teachers to rate themselves on a five-point Likert's Scale. Data obtained was fed into Software Package for Social Scientist (SPSS) for reliability statistics. In reliability statistics one item was deleted, so remaining were 44. These 44 items have a value of .93. The scale has good reliability value. The reliability value of the sub-scales is also good. The scale can be easily used to measure the occupational stress in teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) during the postpartum period is a serious medical emergency and the most important non-atherosclerotic cause of coronary artery disease (CAD) in this population. While conservative management is recommended in most SCAD scenarios, cases complicated by hemodynamic instability or cardiogenic shock are particularly challenging and might be amenable only with invasive percutaneous or cardiothoracic surgical management. Herein, we present a case of a 35-year-old otherwise healthy woman that suffered an intense emotional stress event and was subsequently admitted with crushing chest pain to the emergency department. The initial electrocardiogram showed dynamic changes suggesting anterolateral ST-elevation myocardial infarction. She gave birth to a healthy child 3 months before the current presentation. Diagnostic angiography found no occlusive CAD but instead an extensive intramural hematoma originating from the left main artery dissection and extending to the whole left coronary circulation was observed. Hemodynamic instability and hypotension soon followed, and the patient went into cardiogenic shock. The heart team opted for conservative and supportive intensive care management without surgical or percutaneous intervention. This decision ultimately led to the successful extubation of the patient and the achievement of hemodynamic stability. The patient was eventually safely discharged home without any permanent disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The manifestation of Takotsubo Syndrome (TTS) may be different in males and females based on past reports and our clinical research. However, the gender differences in TTS are unknown because patients with TTS are predominantly female. TTS is common in females; however, approximately 10–20% of males have TTS and it has been reported that in-hospital complications mostly occur in males. TTS in males is often caused by physical stress and often develops in the hospital or during hospitalization. TTS in males is associated with severe cardiac complications, which may require careful observations and interventions. Regarding the pathogenic mechanism of TTS, it has been reported that decreased estrogen levels, common in postmenopausal females, are involved in the pathogenic mechanism. Moreover, the pathological findings and gene expression were different in males and females. From these results, it can be considered that the mechanism of the onset of TTS may be different between males and females. Most patients with Takotsubo Syndrome (TTS) are postmenopausal females. TTS in males is rare and gender differences have not been sufficiently investigated. Therefore, we investigated gender differences in TTS. TTS in males and females is often triggered by physical and emotional stress, respectively. Heart failure, a severe in-hospital complication, requires greater mechanical respiratory support in males. Fatal arrhythmias such as ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation and in-hospital mortality rates are higher in males. The white blood cell (WBC) count has been shown to be higher in males than in females with cardiovascular death compared with non-cardiovascular death. Therefore, the WBC count, a simple marker, may reflect severe TTS. Decreased estrogen levels, common in postmenopausal females, are a pathogenic mechanism of TTS. Females have a more significant increase in the extracellular matrix-receptor interaction than males. Moreover, the pathological findings after hematoxylin–eosin staining were different in males and females. Males had more severe complications than females in the acute phase of TTS; thus, more careful observations and interventions are likely required. From these results, it can be considered that the mechanism of the onset of TTS may be different between males and females. Therefore, it is necessary to fully understand the gender differences in order to more effectively manage TTS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Repeated offences, such as domestic violence, are often distressing for victims. When victims of such offences make an allegation of abuse, they are usually required to report details about specific incidents. Therefore, this pre-registered study examined whether memory for an emotionally stressful versus non-stressful repeated event would differ depending on the instance being recalled. Eighty female participants (Mage = 22.3, SD = 7.4) imagined being involved in four abusive (emotionally stressful repeated event) or non-abusive relationship instances (non-stressful repeated event) over a four-week period. One-week after the last instance, participants completed recall and source memory questions about each instance. We found no evidence that memory for stressful versus non-stressful repeated events differed depending on the instance being recalled. Instead, we found that memory was more accurate for the last instance relative to the other instances (i.e., recency effect), regardless of event stressfulness. We also found that memory accuracy was better across all instances in the stressful than the non-stressful group. The findings suggest that victim-survivors of abuse might find the last instance of abuse particularly memorable when the delay between the offence and report is one-week or less, and the stressfulness of the instance might help them recall more details. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new approach to classify emotional stress in the two main areas of the valance-arousal space by using bio-signals. Since electroencephalogram (EEG) is widely used in biomedical research, it is used as the main signal. We designed an efficient acquisition protocol to acquire the EEG and psychophysiological. Two specific areas of the valence-arousal emotional stress space are defined, corresponding to negatively excited and calm-neutral states. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation of psychophysiological signals have been used to select suitable segments of EEG signal for improving efficiency and performance of emotional stress recognition system. After pre-processing the EEG signals, wavelet coefficients and chaotic invariants like fractal dimension, correlation dimension and wavelet entropy were used to extract the features of the signal. So, by using independent-sample T-Test and Linear Discriminate Analysis (LDA), effective features are selected. The results show that, the average classification accuracy were 80.1% and 84.9% for two categories of emotional stress states using the LDA and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers respectively. We achieved an improvement in accuracy, in compared to our previous studies in the similar field. Therefore, this new fusion link between EEG and psychophysiological signals are more robust in comparison to the separate signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mechanism of selective brain cooling (SBC) allows the brain to remain cooler than the rest of the body. This paper aims to provide new ideas to better understand SBC, emphasizing how it works, how it is controlled and what its role is. There are two distinct types of SBC in homeotherms: (1) using precooling of arterial blood destined for the brain, with cool venous blood returning from the nose and head skin, (2) using venous blood to cool the brain directly. There is a common mechanism of control of SBC intensity. Reduced sympathetic activity leads to simultaneous dilation of the angular oculi veins, supplying the intracranial heat exchangers, and constriction of the facial veins, supplying the heart. Therefore, SBC is enhanced during heat exposure, endurance exercise, relaxed wakefulness and NREM sleep, and vanishes in the cold and during emotional distress. SBC is a multifunctional effector mechanism: it protects the brain from heat damage; it intensifies in dehydrated mammals, thereby saving water; it helps exercising animals delay exhaustion; it might thermally modulate alertness; it is used in diving animals to drop cerebral temperature much below its normal level, expanding diving capacity and protecting the brain from asphyxic damage. Altogether, SBC integrates both thermal and non-thermal regulatory functions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

AIMH), Geneva, SwitzerlandCorrespondence: Andrzej KokoszkaII Department of Psychiatry, Medical University of Warsaw, 03-242 Kondratowicza 8 street, Warsaw, PolandTel/Fax +48 22 326 58 92Email [email protected] Purpose: The aim of this study was to assess the structure and validate the Polish version of the Problem Areas in Diabetes (PAID) scale, as the current translations of the original English version significantly vary in their psychometric properties. Patients and Methods: Two hundred and sixteen consecutive Polish outpatients were invited to participate in this international cross-sectional study on depression in diabetes. The research was based on the demographic and clinical characteristics of the study population, including the level of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and scores obtained in the Polish versions of the following questionnaires: PAID, World Health Organization-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5), Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9). The psychiatric diagnosis was conducted with the use of Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I.). Results: Exploratory factor analyses yielded a 1-factor structure that included all 20 items. The internal consistency of the Polish version of PAID was high (Cronbach α = 0.97). There were significant positive correlation between PAID and PHQ-9 and a negative correlation between PAID and WHO-5. We also observed a negative association between PAID scores and age and a positive correlation between PAID and HbA1c levels. Patients with depression reported significantly higher PAID scores as compared with those without depressive symptoms. Conclusion: The Polish version of PAID has a one-factor structure and is a reliable, valid outcome measure for Polish outpatients with type 2 diabetes and it may constitute a useful instrument for screening for psychologic issues in diabetic patients during their appointments at the diabetes clinic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increased interest in exploring the use of sensory rooms in psychiatric inpatient care. Sensory rooms can provide stimulation via sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste in a demand-free environment that is controlled by the patient. The rooms may reduce patients' distress and agitation, as well as rates of seclusion and restraint. Successful implementation of sensory rooms is influenced by the attitudes and approach of staff. This paper presents a study of the experiences of 126 staff members who worked with sensory rooms in a Swedish inpatient psychiatry setting. A cross-sectional descriptive survey design was used. Data were collected by a web based self-report 12-item questionnaire that included both open- and closed-ended questions. Our findings strengthen the results of previous research in this area in many ways. Content analyses revealed three main categories: hopes and concerns, focusing on patients' self-care, and the room as a sanctuary. Although staff initially described both negative and positive expectations of sensory rooms, after working with the rooms, there was a strong emphasis on more positive experiences, such as letting go of control and observing an increase in patients' self-confidence, emotional self-care and well-being. Our findings support the important principals of person-centred nursing and recovery-oriented mental health and the ability of staff to implement these principles by working with sensory rooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]