Do levels of perceived stress increase with increasing age after age 65? A population-based study

Osmanovic-Thunström, Almira; Mossello, Enrico; Åkerstedt, Torbjörn; Fratiglioni, Laura; Wang, Huixin

doi:10.1093/ageing/afv078

Cited by 80 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…This project also uniquely focuses on middle aged and older women, a population that remains relatively under-represented in prospective evaluations of stressful life experiences and their relation to CVD. Additionally, research about stress and aging > 65 years old has largely utilized the 10-item perceived stress score (PSS, (19)). As a result, we believe that manuscripts resulting from our cumulative psychological stress study will provide valuable new clinical information that can inform behavioral and therapeutic interventions aimed at stress reduction and CVD risk attention.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additionally, although a large body of evidence has focused on caregiving stress and CVD risk (13,14), less work has focused on other chronic non-work stressors, and more importantly on how a combination of stressful experiences influences CVD risk in either sex. Overall, findings about stress and aging, particularly in middle aged and older women have been mixed and rely on cross-sectional data or populations with mental or physical co-morbid conditions (15–19). Indeed, research from the Swedish National Aging and Study shows that among adults aged 66–97 years old without dementia, high stress was associated with increasing age and female sex (19).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Overall, findings about stress and aging, particularly in middle aged and older women have been mixed and rely on cross-sectional data or populations with mental or physical co-morbid conditions (15–19). Indeed, research from the Swedish National Aging and Study shows that among adults aged 66–97 years old without dementia, high stress was associated with increasing age and female sex (19). These stressors may result in excessive allostatic load through inflammatory and neuro-hormonal processes via activation of the autonomic nervous system (20).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cumulative psychological stress and cardiovascular disease risk in middle aged and older women: Rationale, design, and baseline characteristics

Albert

Durazo

Slopen

et al. 2017

American Heart Journal

101

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Although a growing body of evidence indicates strong links between psychological stress (stress) and untoward cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes, comprehensive examination of these effects remains lacking. The “Cumulative Psychological Stress and Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Middle Aged and Older Women” study is embedded within the landmark Women’s Health Study (WHS) follow-up cohort and seeks to evaluate the individual and joint effects of stressors (cumulative stress) on incident CVD risk, including myocardial infarction, stroke, coronary revascularization and CVD death. GWAS data will be used for exploratory analyses to identify any genes associated with stress and CVD. This study prospectively follows 25,335 women (mean age 72.2 ± 6.04 years) without CVD who returned a short mailed stress questionnaire at baseline and 3 years of follow-up inquiring about their experiences with stress including perceived stress, work stress, work-family spillover, financial stress, traumatic and major life events, discrimination and neighborhood environment/stressors. Other domains ascertained were sleep, anger, cynical hostility, depression, anxiety, social support, intimate partner relations, volunteer and social activities. Higher levels of cumulative stress were associated with younger age and black race/ethnicity, divorced or separated marital status, increased prevalence of obesity, smoking, diabetes, depression and anxiety (p<0.001 for each). Findings from this study will provide clinically important, new information about associations of cumulative stress, environmental, lifestyle and genetic factors with incident CVD risk in aging women.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cumulative psychological stress and cardiovascular disease risk in middle aged and older women: Rationale, design, and baseline characteristics

Albert

Durazo

Slopen

et al. 2017

American Heart Journal

101

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…These results underline anecdotal papers which have conferred the primary difficulties females have in a male-oriented medical surrounding (Russo, Miller, & Vitaliano, 1985). Bernard Misigo (2015) investigated the influence of Gender on perceived stress level of undergraduate university students from three public universities in the western part of Kenya and found a significant difference between the stress mean scores of males and females (Misigo, 2015). His findings suggest female students reported higher stress levels than males.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 83%

The Effect of Gender, Age, Experience and Industry on Employees’ Perceived stress: The Case of Bangladesh

Masoom¹,

Hoque²

2018

RJAP

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Literature explaining the causes of widespread work-related stress often focuses more on the stressors, but give less sufficient attention to the perception of the employees who suffers. Stress is not an absolute state of the affairs, it is rather relative, and often depends on the 'definition of the situation' of the person of interest. Hence, measuring stress faces the issues of validity and reliability concerning the socio-economic context. The study adopts Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale (PSS10), the most popular stress measurement tool to explore the stress levels of the employees working in various industries in Bangladesh. The validity and reliability of the scale are tested with two distinguished yet related sample set; Sample one (n=460) considers the employees of sixteen distinct industries, and sample two (n=413) includes exclusively the employees of banking industry. Gender, Age, Industry, and 'year of experiences' are considered as the variables of interest to explore their relationships with perceived stress. The results suggest that the level of stress does not very significantly in accordance with gender; however perceived social stress differs in terms of Age, Experience and Industry that a person belongs.

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“…Stressors beyond health status are numerous, and reactions to them are highly personal, as briefly highlighted here. Research published in 2015 [1] suggests that older women, as compared to older men, report higher levels of stress, making them a research population that should receive more attention when studying perceived stress.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Pilot Psychometric Study on the Validation of the Older Women’s Non-Medical Stress Scale (OWNMSS) on an Ethnically Diverse Sample

Laganá

Prilutsky²

2016

J Geriatr Palliat Care

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Introduction Older women often experience various types of stressors, including the death of a spouse and associated financial stress (often with a lack of social support), emotional stress due to factors such as caregiving and being single, and the challenges of the aging process. These circumstances could produce or aggravate anxious symptomatology that can in turn compound the negative effects of aging. A brief scale of perceived stress that is not confounded with health status and covers multiple culturally relevant potential stressors is needed for quick use in busy medical settings. Aim To assess the reliability and the validity of an original stress scale designed to measure perceptions of stress beyond health status in a non-clinical convenience sample of community-dwelling older women. Method In this cross-sectional pilot investigation, via conducting item-total correlations and correlational tests of validity, we studied the psychometric properties of our measure using data from volunteer older subjects (mainly low-income and from non-Caucasian backgrounds). The domains covered by the nine items of the tool were selected based on a literature review of common stressors experienced by older adults, especially by older women. Data were collected face-to-face using a demographic list, a well-established depression measure, a brief posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) screener, and our 9-item stress tool. Primary outcomes: reliability and validity of the scale of older women’s non-medical stress. Secondary outcomes: demographic characteristics of the sample and correlations between stress items. Results Based on our sample of older women (N=40, mean age 71 years), good internal consistency between the items of the stress scale was found (Cronbach’s a=.66). The findings of the data analyses also revealed that our psychometric tool has good convergent validity with the PTSD screener (r=.53). Moreover, in contrast with most other stress tools, it has strong discriminant validity (r=.11) with a well-validated depression scale. Conclusion Our results suggest that this new measure is psychometrically strong. Future research directions encompass using larger samples, ideally including older men with the modification of the scale’s name, as well as validating this tool against more measures. Clinical implications of our findings are briefly discussed.

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Do levels of perceived stress increase with increasing age after age 65? A population-based study

Abstract: health-related stress is highly prevalent in older adults and seems to play an important role in the association between levels of perceived stress and age in older adults.

Cited by 80 publications

References 35 publications

Cumulative psychological stress and cardiovascular disease risk in middle aged and older women: Rationale, design, and baseline characteristics

Cumulative psychological stress and cardiovascular disease risk in middle aged and older women: Rationale, design, and baseline characteristics

The Effect of Gender, Age, Experience and Industry on Employees’ Perceived stress: The Case of Bangladesh

A Pilot Psychometric Study on the Validation of the Older Women’s Non-Medical Stress Scale (OWNMSS) on an Ethnically Diverse Sample

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