The authors prospectively investigated stress in 71, mostly European American, pregnant women. Conservation of Resources (COR) theory was applied to assess the impact of resource losses and gains that occur in women's lives. Resources were defined as those things that people value or that act as a means to obtaining that which they value and include social, personal, object, and condition resources. The authors hypothesized that women's resource losses would better predict postpartum anger and depression than their resource gains (in the opposite direction). They also predicted that earlier resource loss would accelerate the negative impact of later resource loss on postpartum distress. Resource gain was expected to be most salient when resource losses co-occurred, such that resource gains buffered the negative impact of resource loss. The hypotheses were generally supported and argue for the primacy of resource loss in the stress process.

The authors examined the prospective influence of stress, self-esteem, and social support on the postpartum depressive symptoms of 191 inner-city women (139 European Americans and 52 African Americans) over 3 waves of data collection. Depressive symptomatology was measured by multiple indicators, including self-report and clinical scales. Women became less depressed as they move from prenatal to postpartum stages and adjusted to their pregnancy and its consequences. LISREL and regression analyses indicated that stress was related to increased depression, whereas greater income and social support were related to decreased depression. Self-esteem was related to lower depression at the prenatal and postpartum periods but not to change in depression from the prenatal to the postpartum period. The results also indicated that self-esteem and social support did not have additional stress-buffering effects over and above their direct effects on depression. Finally, African American women did not differ from European American women terms of depression or in terms of how they were impacted by stress or psychosocial resources.

Behavioral change reduces risk of HIV infection and development of AIDS. We compared 206 inner-city women who were randomly assigned to a 4-session AIDS-prevention group or to one of two controls, a health-promotion group or a no-intervention group. AIDS-prevention and health-promotion groups provided information, behavioral competency training, and social support. Only the AIDS-prevention group focused on AIDS-specific knowledge and skills. The AIDS-prevention group produced moderate, consistent increases in knowledge and safer sex behaviors in comparison with either the health-promotion or no-intervention group. Self-report and objective changes were sustained 6 months after intervention for both African-American and European-American women.

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