18. November 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Does Adolescent Stress Lead to Mood Disorders in Adulthood?

ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2010) — Stress may be more hazardous to our mental health than previously believed, according to new research. A series of studies from the institution have found there may be a link between the recent rise in depression rates and the increase of daily stress.

“Major depression has become one of the most pressing health issues in both developing and developed countries,” says principle researcher Mark Ellenbogen, a professor at the Concordia Centre for Research in Human Development and a Canada Research Chair in Developmental Psychopathology.

“What is especially alarming is that depression in young people is increasing in successive generations. People are suffering from depression earlier in life and more people are getting it. We want to know why and how. We believe that stress is a major contributor.”

From parent to child Ellenbogen and colleagues are particularly interested in the link between childhood stress and the development of clinical depression and bipolar disorder. His team is evaluating the stress of children who are living in families where one parent is affected by a mood disorder.

For a free PDF copy of John’s award-winning self-help book on the latest ways to turn down stress and anxiety, visit http://www.GuidetoSelf.com and enter your name and email address for instant access to 216 pages of useful tools! 

“Previous studies have shown that kids from at-risk families are at higher risk of having a psychiatric disorder in their lifetime,” says Ellenbogen. “We know that they’re not just inheriting these traits but they are also being raised in environment that is stressful, chaotic and lacking in structure. Our goal is to tease out how this type of environment influences these children’s mental health in adolescence and adulthood.”

Cortisol, the stress hormone

To assess stress levels, Ellenbogen is measuring the levels of the stress hormone, cortisol present in the children’s saliva. Cortisol is a hormone that is produced by the body in response to stressful life events and challenges.

Ellenbogen’s recent findings have shown that the adolescent offspring of at-risk families have higher salivary cortisol levels than kids from families without disorders. What’s more, he found these elevated levels persist into young adulthood.

“Although there may be many causes to the rise in cortisol, this increase may be in part due to exposure to family stress and parenting style,” says Ellenbogen. “We have not yet confirmed that these children then go on to develop mood disorders of their own. However, we have some exciting preliminary data showing that high cortisol levels in adolescences doubles your risk for developing a serious mood disorder in young adulthood.”

We must find and disseminate ways to manage stress to large populations. This may be mindfulness, progressive muscle relaxation, reframing, exercise, deep breathing, self-compassion, meditation, yoga, tai chi, or any other number of possible means.

To life, love and deep breaths!

John Schinnerer Ph.D.

Founder of Guide to Self

For a free PDF copy of John’s award-winning self-help book on the latest ways to turn down stress and anxiety, visit http://www.GuidetoSelf.com and enter your name and email address for instant access to 216 pages of useful tools! 
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Concordia University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
________________________________________
Journal Reference:
1. Mark A Ellenbogen, Jonathan B Santo, Anne-Marie Linnen, Claire-Dominique Walker, Sheilagh Hodgins. High cortisol levels in the offspring of parents with bipolar disorder during two weeks of daily sampling. Bipolar Disorders, 2010; 12 (1): 77 DOI: 10.1111/j.1399-5618.2009.00770.x

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13. November 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From Ken Pope’s listserv…

Subject: recommended: *Science*: “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind” by Matthew Killingsworth & Dan Gilbert at Harvard University

Today’s new issue of the American association for the Advancement of Science’s journal *Science* (Vol. 330. no. 6006) includes an article: “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind.”

The authors are Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert.

Here are some excerpts:

Many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and “to be here now.”

These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

Are they right?

Laboratory experiments have revealed a great deal about the cognitive and neural bases of mind wandering (3-7), but little about its emotional consequences in everyday life.

The most reliable method for investigating real-world emotion is experience sampling, which involves contacting people as they engage in their everyday activities and asking them to report their thoughts, feelings, and actions at that moment.

<snip>

We solved this problem by developing a Web application for the iPhone (Apple Incorporated, Cupertino, California), which we used to create an unusually large database of real-time reports of thoughts, feelings, and actions of a broad range of people as they went about their daily activities.

The application contacts participants through their iPhones at random moments during their waking hours, presents them with questions, and records their answers to a database at www.trackyourhappiness.org.

The database currently contains nearly a quarter of a million samples from about 5000 people from 83 different countries who range in age from 18 to 88 and who collectively represent every one of 86 major occupational categories.

To find out how often people’s minds wander, what topics they wander to, and how those wanderings affect their happiness, we analyzed samples from 2250 adults (58.8% male, 73.9% residing in the United States, mean age of 34 years) who were randomly assigned to answer a happiness question (”How are you feeling right now?”) answered on a continuous sliding scale from very bad (0) to very good (100), an activity question (”What are you doing right

now?”) answered by endorsing one or more of 22 activities adapted from the day reconstruction method (10, 11), and a mind-wandering question (”Are you thinking about something other than what you’re currently doing?”) answered with one of four options: no; yes, something pleasant; yes, something neutral; or yes, something unpleasant.

Our analyses revealed three facts.

First, people’s minds wandered frequently, regardless of what they were doing.

Mind wandering occurred in 46.9% of the samples and in at least 30% of the samples taken during every activity except making love.

The frequency of mind wandering in our real-world sample was considerably higher than is typically seen in laboratory experiments.

<snip>

Second, multilevel regression revealed that people were less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were not [slope (b) = -8.79, P < 0.001], and this was true during all activities, including the least enjoyable.

Although people’s minds were more likely to wander to pleasant topics (42.5% of samples) than to unpleasant topics (26.5% of samples) or neutral topics (31% of samples), people were no happier when thinking about pleasant topics than about their current activity (b = -0.52, not

significant) and were considerably unhappier when thinking about neutral topics (b = -7.2, P < 0.001) or unpleasant topics (b = -23.9, P < 0.001) than about their current activity (Fig. 1, bottom).

Although negative moods are known to cause mind wandering (13), time-lag analyses strongly suggested that mind wandering in our sample was generally the cause, and not merely the consequence, of unhappiness (12).

Third, what people were thinking was a better predictor of their happiness than was what they were doing.

The nature of people’s activities explained 4.6% of the within-person variance in happiness and 3.2% of the between-person variance in happiness, but mind wandering explained 10.8% of within-person variance in happiness and 17.7% of between-person variance in happiness.

The variance explained by mind wandering was largely independent of the variance explained by the nature of activities, suggesting that the two were independent influences on happiness.

In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

[end excerpts]

The author note provides the following contact info:

<mkilling@fas.harvard.edu>.

Ken Pope

To life, love and laughter,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder of Guide to Self

P.S. For a free PDF copy of John’s award-winning self-help book on ways to focus the mind, turn down negative emotions, and turn up positive emotions simply visit http://www.GuideToSelf.com, click on the yellow book icon on the left side of the page, and enter your email and name. You will be granted instant access to 216 pages of life-improving scientifically-proven tools to focus your mind!

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12. November 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily…

ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2010) — Some scholars estimate that presenteeism, a relatively recent buzzword that applies to people who are less productive at work because of health issues, costs employers as much as three times the dollar amount as absenteeism in terms of lost productivity.

But researchers at University of Michigan believe those numbers may be inaccurate. A new opinion paper suggests that the tools for measuring and quantifying hours of lost productivity and translating those hours to dollars are unreliable and don’t capture the entire presenteeism picture, said Susan Hagen, an analyst from the U-M School of Kinesiology Health Management Research Center (HMRC).

Because of this, the HMRC has suggested a three-year moratorium on its studies of presenteeism that translate hours of productivity loss into financial or dollar equivalents.

The HMRC defines presenteeism as reduced productivity at work due to health conditions such as asthma, back pain, allergies or depression.

“It’s hard to be 100 percent effective every moment you’re at work,” Hagen said. “We’re talking about the lack of productivity that stems from a health condition, or because you’re worried about your health.”

One of the challenges in measuring presenteeism is that all the measurement instruments use self-reported data. This means you’re depending on employees to report they aren’t working as effectively as they could be, due to their health.

“There are all kind of estimates as to how often it happens,” Hagen said. “The estimates can vary so widely. Some studies say that most workers don’t have any presenteeism, while there is other research that suggests most workers experience presenteeism to some degree.”

Another big problem is that there are so many different measuring tools, and each tool may measure presenteeism in a different way. Also, not all health problems affect workers in the same ways. For example, a person may have allergies for two weeks in May and feel horrible, but the measurement instrument could take that two weeks and expand that bad experience to 12 months. This process vastly over-reports the illness and thus, the hours lost and the subsequent financial loss.

“Almost everybody believes in the concept of presenteeism but maybe some of those calculations based on those early measurements aren’t accurate,” Hagen said.

“Our concern is that organizations may be making financial or future decisions based on data that may not support those decisions,” Hagen said.

The paper appears in the November issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

University of Michigan (2010, November 10). Sick at work and surfing the net? You’re not alone — or are you?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 11, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com¬ /releases/2010/11/101109152943.htm

To life, love, health and laughter,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder of Guide to Self, Inc.

For a complimentary copy of the award-winning self-improvement book on latest ways to turn down anger, anxiety, sadness and guilt, visit http://www.GuidetoSelf.com and enter your name and email. This top self-help book (Guide to Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Managing Emotion and Thought) outlines the latest tools to manage your own mind, turn up the volume on love, joy, hope, interest, passion, curiosity, awe, self-compassion and more. Managing  your mind leads to greater physical health, better relationships, more enjoyment in life and healthier relationships. What’s not to like?!

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6. October 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Mindfulness Shown to Turn Down Volume on Stress, Irritability and Depression 

I’m writing to let you know of a bonus for you! I just added a Mindfulness video shown to turn down the volume on stress, anger & depression.

It also increases contentment and relaxation.

Mindfulness is backed by 25 years of top notch research. It has been shown to be highly effective in reducing anger, anxiety, stress and sadness. It also improves awareness, contentment and relaxation.

It is involved in a new branch of medicine (integrative medicine) which recognizes the powerful mind-body connection in the healing process. All of integrative medicine involves a mindfulness component. Physical health is intricately connected with emotional health. Learn how to improve BOTH your emotional health and your physical health with a simple 15 minute exercise.

Only my Facebook friends can check it out. If you are interested, and not a friend, simply send me a friend request on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1117562195&v=box_3&ref=profile#!/profile.php?id=1117562195 

Through my clients, I have seen the stress that is running rampant out there due to the stressed economy. Finances are adding a layer of stress and anxiety to everyone out there. This is on top of the ongoing stressors that everyone already deals with. Things are tough out there. Get access to a powerful new tool to turn down the volume on stress and increase your relaxation.

Have a calm, relaxing week!

All my love,

 John Schinnerer Ph.D.

Guide to Self, Inc.

For a free copy of my award-winning book on emotional management, click here.

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9. September 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Stress Management Techniques for Men

Obviously, it is a stressful time for many right now. Unemployment worries loom. Financial stressors are all about. There are a lot of negative stories you could be focusing on right now.

Stop. Rather than mindlessly accept to continually leave the gates to your mind unguarded, choose what to put into your head.

Your mind is like a fertile garden. Be aware of what types of information you allow into your mind for those are the seeds of thoughts and feelings that will come to fruition later.

Stop watching the nightly news. Stop watching Glenn Beck. Stop listening to terrified, angry crowds of people. Fill your head with relaxing, calming, productive messages instead.

First, focus on what your are doing well. The human mind is hardwired to focus on what is going wrong, where threats are coming from and that which is negative. It is critical that we learn to train our brain to focus on our strengths, our passions, what we are doing well during stressful times, such as we have currently.

As far as tools to turn down the volume on stress and the subsequent anger it sparks, here are some useful techniques…

Tune in to your body. Be aware of your bodily sensations.  For example, if you experience a tightness in the chest, shallow breathing, a rise in heart rate, you know instantly that you are beginning to get angry or stressed.

As soon as you sense stress or anger, take a break from the situation (e.g., take a walk outside, exercise, watch a comedy, count from 10 to 1, breathe deeply, distract yourself with a pleasant memory from a recent vacation).

Turn down the anger. Oftentimes, when you are stressed, there is a thin veil of anger at yourself involved. To alleviate the anger at yourself, remember the power of self-compassion. Talk to yourself as you would a young child around 2 to 3 years old. Be kind, understanding and compassionate. Try not to yell at yourself in your own head.

Keep things in perspective. An excellent tool for this is to ask yourself “Will this matter 10 years from now?” Odds are, the answer will be “No”. Then take steps to relax as above.

Deal with the fear. There may be layers of fear or anxiety present in your stress. So remember to continue facing your fears one at a time. Look for small steps of improvement. Praise yourself for being brave, that is, facing your fears.

Use your imagination to your advantage. Visualize yourself as a fishing net stretched across a river. The river is the world of emotions rushing towards you. You are the net. You allow all negative emotions to race right through you. All positive emotions e.g., contentment, joy, pride, curiosity, awe, love, etc. are caught and kept by you the net.

Breathe. Breathe deeply 3 minutes per day into your abdomen or stomach region. When you breathe in, your belly should inflate like a balloon. When you breathe out, your belly should deflate. Inhale for 6 seconds, hold for 1, exhale for 8 seconds, hold for 4. Repeat 5 times.

Use a relaxation file. Listen to a progressive muscle relaxation file 4 times in the next 7 days to reduce your overall emotional arousal level.  There are some excellent free resources on mindfulness, relaxation, and sleep at MIT Medical School and ASU…

http://vcc.asu.edu/relax/ - Arizona State University Relaxation Training

http://medweb.mit.edu/wellness/resources/downloads.html - MIT Medical Relaxation Training

Remind yourself of what you can control. Ask yourself, “Is this something under my control?” If the answer is ‘no’ then let it go.

For more stress management and anger management tools, check out my site at http://www.GuideToSelf.com and the video blog at http://drjohnsblog.wordpress.com.

Have a stress free week!

All the best,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Award-winning author, founder of Guide to Self

For a free copy of John’s award-winning self-help book, visit Guide to Self and register with your name and email!

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