Archival ReportLifetime Adversity Leads to Blunted Stress Axis Reactivity: Studies from the Oklahoma Family Health Patterns Project
Section snippets
Overview
The Oklahoma Family Health Patterns Project is a study of healthy young adults with and without a family history of alcoholism (n = 156 and n = 198, respectively). Because of the sample size and consistent protocol, the dataset provides a useful resource for assessing the individual differences in stress reactivity in healthy young adults. In preliminary analyses, family history of alcoholism was not a significant predictor of heart rate or cortisol reactivity when adversity was accounted for (F
Results
Demographic data are shown in Table 1. Persons with more lifetime adversity had less education and, among women, had lower SES and higher body mass index. Alcohol intake patterns did not differ across adversity groups, among either men or women, p values ≥ .27. Persons with a family history of alcoholism reported more adverse life events than persons from nonalcoholic families among both men and women.
The psychological impact of the stressors was validated by greater self-reports of activation
Discussion
The present study shows that men and women who experience more adverse life events before age 15 also have smaller cortisol and heart rate responses to psychological stress. These findings seem to illustrate an impact of stress exposure in childhood and adolescence on the regulation of the stress axis in adulthood.
Caspi et al. (20, 21) demonstrated the deleterious effect of childhood maltreatment on psychiatric and behavioral outcomes in persons with genetic vulnerabilities. Other studies have
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