Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association
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There is a large body of literature documenting the relationship between traumatic stress and deleterious physical health outcomes. Although posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms have been proposed to explain this relationship, previous research has produced inconsistent results when moderating variables such as gender or type of traumatic stressor are considered. Within a large sample of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) Veterans, the current study examined if deployment stressors (i.e., combat stress, harassment stress) contributed unique variance to the prediction of physical health symptoms (i.e., pain, nonpain) beyond the effects of PTSD symptoms. ⋯ This study extends the existing literature by demonstrating the unique influence of harassment stress on physical health outcomes. Specifically, the relationship between combat stress and physical health symptoms appears to be explained mainly by an individual's experience of PTSD symptoms, whereas the relationship between harassment stress and physical health symptoms is not fully explained by PTSD symptoms, suggesting that other variables may be involved in the pathway from harassment stress to physical health symptoms.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Sleep deprivation potentiates HPA axis stress reactivity in healthy adults.
This article describes an experiment that was designed to investigate the effects of sleep deprivation on physiological stress responses in healthy adults. ⋯ Sleep deprivation is associated with both elevated resting cortisol release and with an exaggerated cortisol response to a stressor indicative of elevated HPA axis responses in healthy adults. Individual differences in the magnitude of this response may represent a risk factor for psychological and physical health consequences associated with heightened cortisol exposure.