Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Trait Mindfulness, Perceived Stress, And Impulsivity In Understanding The Relationship Between Stress Mindset And Psychological Intimate Partner Aggression, Sarah Joyanna Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations

Perpetration of psychological intimate partner aggression is a pervasive health issue and has been estimated to occur in 60 to 90 percent of relationships. Effects of intimate partner violence on its victims has been demonstrated to have lasting physical and mental health issues. Psychological intimate partner aggression has been demonstrated to have particularly harmful effects, above and beyond those identified in physical intimate partner aggression. Psychological intimate partner aggression has been demonstrated to be impacted by impulsivity, stress-mindset, perceived stress, and mindfulness. The present study proposed to examine a path analysis model of the relation between stress-mindset and psychological intimate …

Social Dominance Alters Stress-Induced Neural Activity And Generates Individual Differences In Stress Vulnerability, Jenna Lee Laymon

Masters Theses

Identifying the physiological and behavioral mechanisms that underlie stress vulnerability is a crucial step toward identifying novel targets for the prevention and treatment of stress-related disorders. Social status is a key environmental factor that contributes to individual variations in stress vulnerability. In particular, achieving a subordinate social status has been shown to produce susceptibility to anxiety-like and depressive-like behavior. In this project, our aim was to identify neural ensembles regulating how dominance status modulated stress-induced changes in avoidant behavior in male and female Syrian hamsters. Using a viral vector that codes for robust activity marker (RAM), we investigated whether stress-induced …

“Sometimes The People Giving The Care Get A Little Overlooked”: Athletic Trainers’ Personal Use Of Psychosocial Strategies And Interactions With Mental Performance Consultants, Alexander Bianco

Doctoral Dissertations

In National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I (NCAA DI) athletic departments, athletic trainers (ATs) must navigate an array of stressors in the workplace, and are effectively performers themselves (Estock & Simon, 2018, Mazerolle et al., 2013). While ample research has been conducted on the stressors that ATs experience (see Oglesby et al., 2020) there has been limited work surrounding how ATs can best navigate this environment. Therefore, the purpose of the current investigation was to explore NCAA DI ATs’ perceptions of and experiences with the personal use of psychosocial strategies and sport psychology services to manage their stress, improve their …

Depression, Anxiety, And Stress Severity Impact Social Media Use And Tiktok Addiction, Skylar L. Maguire, Hollie Pellosmaa

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

A Study Of The Effect Of Physiological Stressors On Hypothalamic Regulation Of Reproduction Using An In Vitro System, Lisa L. Amelse

Doctoral Dissertations

Stressors have a negative impact on reproductive efficiency in humans and other animals, which has an economic cost due to infertility treatments for humans and reduced income for food producers. We wished to determine the molecular pathways by which metabolic disturbances and low-level inflammation impact the hypothalamic pituitary gonadal (HPG) axis using an in vitro model. To this end, we used the GT1-7 cell line, an immortalized line expressing the Kiss1R receptor that responds to kisspeptin stimulation with the release of GnRH to assess the impact of stressors on the GnRH-releasing cells. Additionally, we used the KTaV-3 and KTaR-1[A1] …

How Stress And Coping In Nursing Affect Burnout In The Transition To Practice: A Literature Review And Proposed Study, Natalie Elizabeth Meade

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Psychosocial Effects Of Providing Nursing Care To Patients From A Multi-Casualty, School-Associated Shooting Event, William Travis Mccall

Doctoral Dissertations

Secondary traumatic stress describes symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder but that result from witnessing or experiencing the trauma of another individual through a helping relationship. The associated symptoms include intrusions, avoidance, and hyperarousal. Secondary traumatic stress is also associated with the development of compassion fatigue and burnout. The current state of the science identifies that secondary traumatic stress may affect those nurses who provide care to critically ill or injured patients. Research has most commonly examined the prevalence of secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout among nurses in emergency department settings. While attention is frequently given to the …

Child Maltreatment, Perceived Stress, And Opioid Use In Pregnancy, Stephanie Brooke Kors

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study examined pathways from childhood trauma to opioid misuse in pregnancy. We sampled 93 pregnant women at a high-risk pregnancy clinic at a university medical center who were at least in their second trimester. 55 women were considered high-risk due to opioid misuse and 38 women were considered high-risk due to medical reasons other than drug use. Results revealed sexual abuse significantly predicted opioid misuse in pregnancy, while physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect did not. Women with histories of childhood sexual abuse reported significantly higher levels of perceived stress during pregnancy than women who did not report …

Child Maltreatment, Perceived Stress, And Opioid Use In Pregnancy, Stephanie Brooke Kors

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study examined pathways from childhood trauma to opioid misuse in pregnancy. We sampled 93 pregnant women at a high-risk pregnancy clinic at a university medical center who were at least in their second trimester. 55 women were considered high-risk due to opioid misuse and 38 women were considered high-risk due to medical reasons other than drug use. Results revealed sexual abuse significantly predicted opioid misuse in pregnancy, while physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect did not. Women with histories of childhood sexual abuse reported significantly higher levels of perceived stress during pregnancy than women who did not report …

The Implications Of Yoga As A Coping Mechanism For Stress During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Ellie Hunter Madenberg

Masters Theses

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has been extremely devastating across the globe. In the United States specifically, Covid-19 has taken over 545,000 lives and climbing. Over the past year of the pandemic, the rate of mental health concerns has grown significantly. Yoga has been paralleled in growth throughout the course of pandemic with countless new yoga students and advanced students who have dove deeper into the yoga practice.

The study examined the perceived stress levels of yogis and using yoga as a leisure coping strategy for stress reduction during the Covid-19 pandemic. A survey was sent via email to yoga instructors …

Roles For The Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex In Resistance To Acute Social Stress, Johnathon Grizzell

Doctoral Dissertations

The ventromedial aspect of the prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is an evolutionarily conserved region of the frontal lobe with primary roles in social processing and emotional regulation. During particularly stressful situations, neurons of the vmPFC are recruited and, through dynamic circuit-based activity patterns, help the organism integrate pertinent sensory cues and act in a context-specific manner. In the dissertation that follows, I discuss investigations of vmPFC neural and immune system activity as they confer resilience and susceptibility, respectively, to the effects of acute social defeat stress in male Syrian hamsters. We have previously shown that vmPFC neural activity, as indexed by …

Depression, Anxiety, And Stress In Women Misusing Opioids During Pregnancy And Effects On The Development Of Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome, Samantha Noose

Masters Theses

Anxious and depressive disorders are prevalent among women who misuse opioids during pregnancy. Furthermore, these disorders have been linked to the development of neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS) in infants exposed to opioids in-utero. The role of stress in pregnancy among women misusing opioids remains to be understood, however, despite its relevance to anxiety, depression, and substance use. The present study aimed to expand upon current research by comparing symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress in a sample of women who misused opioids during pregnancy (n = 53) and women with high-risk pregnancies for reasons unrelated to drug use (e.g., …

The Impact Of Batch Size On Worker Stress Perception, Ewerton Esdras Rodrigues De Araujo

Masters Theses

The current global competitiveness has led organizations to improve their processes, and Lean Production has been a responsive tool to cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Batch size plays an important role in production control, encompassing the introduction of Lean Production in several organizations. However, the application and sustainability of Lean Production have had their effectiveness contested. Several authors explain that the continuous search for improvement has created pressure among the workforce impacting their stress levels and well-being, causing issues in focus control, authority, moral disengagement, and others. This study aims to check the impact that Batch size has on the …

Appraising Opportunities To Better Understand Well-Being And Performance In The Organizational Sciences, Michael Paul Lerman

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite a strong base of literature that shows appraisal (i.e., an individual’s assessment of the relevance of a possibly stressful situation to their own goals and their likelihood of effectively coping with it) is an important predictor of individual emotion, behavior, and performance, appraisal has been largely relegated to theory by the organizational sciences. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate why studying appraisal adds value to organizational science phenomena. This is accomplished through two empirical essays and a theory essay. First, a metaanalysis assesses the extent to which the challenge-hindrance framework, a perspective that explicitly suggests appraisal is …

Observing The Effects Of Aspergillus Oryzae On Combating The Consequences Of Heat Stress In Lactating Dairy Cows, Abigail Lorraine Kesterson

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Experience Of Childhood Maltreatment And Its Impact On Parenting In A High-Risk Sample, Alex C. Clement

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Neurochemistry And Neural Circuitry Of Stress Resilience, Brooke Nichole Dulka

Doctoral Dissertations

Stress is a contributing factor in the etiology of several mood and anxiety disorders, and animal models of social defeat have been used to investigate the biological basis of stress-related psychopathologies. Syrian hamsters are highly aggressive and territorial, but after social defeat they exhibit a conditioned defeat (CD) response which is characterized by increased submissive behavior and a failure to defend their home territory against a smaller, non-aggressive intruder. We have previously shown that dominant male hamsters show increased c-Fos expression in the infralimbic (IL) subdivision of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) following social defeat and display a reduced CD …

Traditional Rural Values, Posttraumatic Stress, And Posttraumatic Growth Among Rural And Urban Undergraduates, Emily Molly Keller

Masters Theses

Although rurality is often treated as an aspect of diversity, disagreement appears in the literature regarding whether the traditionally rural values of self-reliance, distrust of outsiders, religiosity, centrality of family, and fatalism continue to differentiate rural versus urban residents. The present study examined whether differences in these values exist between rural and urban residents and whether these values may predict posttraumatic stress symptom (PTSS) severity and posttraumatic growth (PTG). Undergraduates who reported experiencing traumatic and stressful events (N = 213) completed measures of these constructs through an online survey. Over a quarter (n = 56) of participants classified …

A Deep Breathing Intervention For Stress Reduction In 5-Year-Old Children, Tara Jean Veerman

Doctoral Dissertations

This multi-manuscript dissertation concentrates on child stress, an important area of attention for social workers. Many children we work with are exposed to chronic stressors such as poverty, child maltreatment, and other forms of stressors and/or trauma. These experiences can be damaging to a child’s development, especially if they occur early in life, and the effects may be long-lasting. The first manuscript provides an overview of the human stress response and its potential deleterious effects on child brain development. It highlights specific brain regions affected by stress, and possible physical and mental health consequences of stress later in life.Building on …

The Effects Of Racialization On European American Stress In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Kimberly T. Wren

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores disparities in stress among European Americans (EA) and between EA and African Americans (AA) in racialized communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Comparisons among EA and between EA and AA are conducted to understand the biological consequences of racialization. Racialization is the process of assigning people to hierarchical categories for purposes of political, social, and economic discrimination. This dissertation investigates how racialization might have affected childhood stress using biocultural theory and facets of critical archaeology theory. Indicators of stress from skeletonized individuals in the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection, Hamann-Todd Osteological Collection, and the Robert …

A Grounded Theory Inquiry Into Crying In Women Dealing With The Emotional Stress Of Personal Crisis, Mary Bess Griffith

Doctoral Dissertations

The belief that crying leads to healing is so widely held and of such longstanding that many healthcare professionals—including nurses, physicians, psychiatrists, and psychologists—accept it as fact even though there is little substantiating scientific evidence. Crying is commonly believed to be an essential factor in restoring mind-body equilibrium after physical and/or emotional trauma has been experienced. If, as has been hypothesized by many scientists and healthcare practitioners, emotional crying is a biopsychosocial healing modality, then specifics of its therapeutic praxis, including limitations and ambiguities, should be incorporated into nursing education and practice. In this grounded theory study, the meaning and …

The Effect Of Ethanol Consumption And Stress On Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor And Tropomyosin Receptor Kinase B Expression., Katie Marie Masters

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid (N-3 Pufa) Supplementation To Lactating Sows On Growth And Indicators Of Stress In The Post-Weaned Pig, John M. Mcafee

Masters Theses

The first experiment was designed to determine the concentration of protected fish oil product (PFO), as Gromega^TM, to be added that would sufficiently decrease the polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) ratio in the sows’ milk and colostrum. Of the 3 diets tested (0.25%, 0.5% and 1%) with a control (0% PFO), only the 1% PFO diet had an effect on the PUFA concentrations. The docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) concentration tended (P = 0.05) to be greater in the 1% PFO diet for both colostrum and milk samples. A second experiment was designed to …

Effects Of Prenatal Stress And Poverty On Fetal Growth, Teresa Anne Lefmann

Doctoral Dissertations

Background. Prenatal stress has negative effects on the developing fetus through the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Programming of the stress response system during gestation has lifelong effects that put the infant at risk for multiple stress-related pathologies. Populations most vulnerable to prenatal stress are African-Americans and individuals of low socioeconomic status.

Methods. The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) research project, a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and individual state health departments, was utilized for this study. Tennessee data from 2009 were compiled from individual birth certificates and PRAMS questionnaire responses to examine three …

Examining Perceived Life Stress Factors Among Intercollegiate Athletes: A Holistic Perspective, Landon Tyler Huffman

Doctoral Dissertations

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) subscribes to the principle of intercollegiate athlete well-being (Article 2.2) which includes health and safety (Article 2.2.3). However, intercollegiate athletes, particularly those competing in arguably the most competitive level of intercollegiate athletics (i.e., NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision [FBS]), are exposed to unique stressors which may compromise their well-being. One dimension which has been received less frequent investigation in the context of athlete welfare is that of spirituality. In lieu of the unique intercollegiate athletic environment and stressors, it is critical to investigate the relationships between the spiritually-related characteristics, specifically religiosity, resiliency, and …

Physical Activity Helping To Reduce Depression, Ellen Margaret Bier

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Work/Family Conflict As A Predictor Of Employee Work Engagement Of Extension Professionals, April B. Martin

Doctoral Dissertations

This study utilizes stress theory to explore the effects of work-family conflict and family-work conflict upon the work engagement outcomes of employees. Using a web-based questionnaire with a primary data sample of 2,782 full time Extension professionals in 46 states, this study incorporates the structural equation modeling analytic technique. This study confirmed the single, second order work-family conflict construct consisting of six first order constructs of work-family time, strain and behavior and family-work time, strain, and behavior. The bi-directionality of work-family conflict and family-work conflict was sustained, as numerous research studies have recommended. The structural equation modeling analysis found the …

A Comparison Of Salmonella Enterica Serovars: Are Prevalence, Virulence And Responses To Environmental Conditions Serovar Or Strain Dependent?, Nan Zhang

Masters Theses

Salmonella are considered the leading cause of foodborne illnesses with frequent outbreaks in United States. While more than 2500 serovars have been identified, Salmonella Typhimurium and Salmonella Enteritidis are primarily responsible for most human infections while Salmonella Kentucky and Salmonella Heidelburg are currently the most prevalent serovars associated with poultry contamination. The relationship between virulence and prevalence is not fully understood, but may be a result of environmental stress exposure such as acid stress. In this research, organic acid (acetate) and inorganic acid (hydrogen chloride) were applied to 15 different serovars isolated from human infections or poultry. The growth curves …

Overseeing Supervisees Treating Clients Exhibiting Suicidal Behaviors: Its Impact On Clinical Supervisors, Michael Girard Catalana

Doctoral Dissertations

Individuals at risk of suicide often seek mental health treatment (Brook, Klap, Liao, & Wells, 2006; Moscicki, 2001; Souminen, Isometsa, Martunnen, Ostamo, & Lonnqvist, 2004). The clinicians who treat these individuals experience significant levels of stress (Knox, Burkard, Bentzler, Schaack, & Hess, 2006; Ruskin, Sakinofsky, Bagby, Dickens, & Sousa, 2004). Clinical supervisors are an important resource for clinicians (Chemtob, Hamada, Bauer, Kinney, & Torigoe, 1988a; Kleespies, Smith, & Becker, 1990; Knox et al., 2006; Maltsberger, 1992; Ruskin et al., 2004). Researchers recently acknowledged that overseeing clinicians whose client exhibited suicidal behavior is also stressful (Catalana, 2012; Hoffman, 2009; Sanger, 2010). …

Misunderstood: Division I African American Female Athletes’ Experiences Of Racism, Ivy Jean Pierce

Masters Theses

Anshel (1990) examined the feelings and perceptions of African American intercollegiate football players about racial issues and the implications they had for the field of sport psychology. However, the experiences of African American female athletes have not been explored. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to examine how African American Division I female athletes experience racism. A second purpose of this thesis was to assist coaches and sport psychology consultants in understanding African American Division I female athletes so they can help them reach their full personal and performance potential. A semi-structured interview guide was developed using a …