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Anxiety and autonomic nervous system function during stress and recovery

Nelligan, Julie
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1060797984

Abstract Details

2003, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Psychology.
Anxiety is recently recognized as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, the nation’s leading cause of death. The most common measures of anxiety are trait anxiety (TA) and phobic anxiety (PA). However, anxiety and depression overlap significantly and TA does not adequately distinguish anxiety from depression (little is known about PA and depression). According to the tripartite model of anxiety and depression, physiological hyperarousal (PH) is a feature of anxiety that distinguishes anxiety from depression. The purpose of this study was to test whether PH was associated with cardiovascular reactivity (a risk factor for heart disease) and recovery. In addition, the association between TA, PA, and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery was also tested. Participants were 79 young (19.4 years ± 2.1 years), ethnically diverse (54% Caucasian, 28% African-American, 18% other) women. They completed self-report questionnaires for PH, TA, and PA, and underwent a laboratory stress protocol that included a video-taped speech task. During the protocol cardiovascular measures were continuously recorded. A series of repeated measures ANOVAs revealed that the speech task was effective in eliciting a significant change in all cardiovascular parameters. Contrary to expectations, a series of linear regressions revealed no relationship between cardiovascular reactivity and PH. TA and PH were similarly unrelated. Analyses designed to test whether PH, TA, and PA were related to recovery from stress revealed no relationship to heart rate or pre-ejection period; however, all other parameters were unavailable for analysis because the curve-fitting technique designed to quantify recovery resulted in a large quantity of unusable data for these parameters. Although these data suggest no relationship between PH and cardiovascular function during stress, further examination of the regression analyses using a non-family-wise corrected alpha level revealed a negative relationship between vascular resistance, PH and PA, which indicated that higher levels of PH and PA were related to less of a change in vascular resistance in response to stress. Although these findings should be taken with caution, they suggest that these measures of anxiety may be related to blood pressure regulation under stress.
Catherine Stoney (Advisor)
127 p.
Psychology, Clinical
Anxiety; Cardiovascular Reactivity; Recovery; Physiological Hyperarousal

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Nelligan, J. (2003). Anxiety and autonomic nervous system function during stress and recovery [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1060797984

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Nelligan, Julie. Anxiety and autonomic nervous system function during stress and recovery. 2003. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1060797984.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Nelligan, Julie. "Anxiety and autonomic nervous system function during stress and recovery." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2003. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1060797984

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1060797984
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.