A cultural script is a pattern of social interaction that is characteristic of a particular cultural group. Data from 152 Hispanic and 165 non-Hispanic US Navy recruits and from 60 bilingual and 50 monolingual Hispanic college students suggest the existence of a Hispanic cultural script termed simpatía. Hispanics were more likely than the non-Hispanics to expect high frequencies of positive social behaviors and low frequencies of negative social behaviors. This suggests different levels of adaptation for social behavior in the 2 cultures. The inattention among non-Hispanics to the presence of this script among Hispanics is likely to lead to misunderstandings when Hispanics and non-Hispanics interact. Hispanics are likely to perceive as negative behaviors those behaviors that are considered neutral by non-Hispanics; also, behaviors that are perceived as positive by non-Hispanics are likely to be perceived as neutral by the Hispanics. (31 ref)

This article explores the relationships between caregiving stressors and caregiver well-being in a representative community sample of disabled elders and their informal caregivers. The direct and indirect effects of stressors and potential mediators on the outcome of caregiver psychological well-being, as measured by depression, were examined using path analysis. Potential mediators of the primary stressors on depression included mastery, emotional support; quality of relationship between the caregiver and the care recipient, formal service use and role overload. Findings indicate that the caregiving stressors (needs for care) led to caregiver depression indirectly through their effect on hours of care provided and the resulting caregiver perception of role overload. Quality of the caregiver/care recipient relationship mediated the relationship of the caregiving stressors and caregiver overload and depression. Finally, regardless of the level of primary stressors, caregivers with high levels of mastery or emotional support were at lower risk of depression. These findings can be used to inform the design of proactive caregiver interventions.

Better reporting of race/ethnicity data will improve agreement between data sources. Previous studies using VA administrative data may have underestimated racial disparities.

The relaxation response (RR) is the counterpart of the stress response. Millennia-old practices evoking the RR include meditation, yoga and repetitive prayer. Although RR elicitation is an effective therapeutic intervention that counteracts the adverse clinical effects of stress in disorders including hypertension, anxiety, insomnia and aging, the underlying molecular mechanisms that explain these clinical benefits remain undetermined. To assess rapid time-dependent (temporal) genomic changes during one session of RR practice among healthy practitioners with years of RR practice and also in novices before and after 8 weeks of RR training, we measured the transcriptome in peripheral blood prior to, immediately after, and 15 minutes after listening to an RR-eliciting or a health education CD. Both short-term and long-term practitioners evoked significant temporal gene expression changes with greater significance in the latter as compared to novices. RR practice enhanced expression of genes associated with energy metabolism, mitochondrial function, insulin secretion and telomere maintenance, and reduced expression of genes linked to inflammatory response and stress-related pathways. Interactive network analyses of RR-affected pathways identified mitochondrial ATP synthase and insulin (INS) as top upregulated critical molecules (focus hubs) and NF-κB pathway genes as top downregulated focus hubs. Our results for the first time indicate that RR elicitation, particularly after long-term practice, may evoke its downstream health benefits by improving mitochondrial energy production and utilization and thus promoting mitochondrial resiliency through upregulation of ATPase and insulin function. Mitochondrial resiliency might also be promoted by RR-induced downregulation of NF-κB-associated upstream and downstream targets that mitigates stress.