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Full-Text Articles in Biological Psychology
Comparing Stress Responses In Generalized Anxiety Disorder Vs. Non-Clinical Populations: A Cortisol And Alpha-Amylase Study, Dominic Joseph Di Loreto
Comparing Stress Responses In Generalized Anxiety Disorder Vs. Non-Clinical Populations: A Cortisol And Alpha-Amylase Study, Dominic Joseph Di Loreto
Masters Theses
Debilitating anxiety affects 6.8 million Americans. Cortisol is an established measure of the stress response which reflects the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity. However, salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) is a relatively new measure of the stress response, and it reflects the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary pathway (SAM pathway) activity. Our aim was to compare these two aspects of the stress response in a Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and a non-clinical population under a stressful stimulus (Knee replacement surgery video). To our knowledge this is the first time anyone has looked at both sAA and cortisol together with respect to GAD. We hypothesized that both cortisol …