Archival ReportLow Heart Rate: A Marker of Stress Resilience. The TRAILS Study
Section snippets
Sample
The TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS) is a prospective cohort study of Dutch adolescents. The study reported here involves data from the first (T1) and second (T2) assessment wave of TRAILS, which ran from March 2001 to July 2002 and September 2003 to December 2004, respectively.
TRAILS participants were selected from five municipalities in the north of The Netherlands, including both urban and rural areas. Children born between October 1, 1989, and September 30, 1990 (first
Results
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics of the variables used in this study.
HR was strongly inversely related to RSA (r = −.60, p < .001), which is reflected in high RSA levels in the low HR group and vice versa. Boys were overrepresented in the low HR group, whereas girls made up the majority in the high HR group. Physical activity was inversely related to HR. Furthermore, HR was not significantly associated with the severity of mental health problems at T1 but did show an association with
Discussion
In this study, we tested the hypothesis that low HR protects against the detrimental effects of stressors on mental health in a large prospective population-based survey of early adolescents. Our expectations were corroborated by the data, in that high exposure to stressors predicted mental health problems in adolescents with intermediate and high HR levels but not in those with low HR. These findings were consistent regardless of the measures used to assess stressful experiences and regardless
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