Single Session and Short-Term Exercise for Mental Health Promotion in Tertiary Students: A Scoping Review

Exercise can improve mental health; however many tertiary students do not reach recommended levels of weekly engagement. Short-term exercise may be more achievable for tertiary students to engage in to promote mental health, particularly during times of high stress. The current scoping review aimed to provide an overview of controlled trials testing the effect of short-term (single bout and up to 3 weeks) exercise across mental health domains, both at rest and in response to an experimentally manipulated laboratory stress task, in tertiary students. The search was conducted using ‘Evidence Finder,’ a database of published and systematic reviews and controlled trials of interventions in the youth mental health field. A total of 14 trials meet inclusion criteria, six measured mental health symptoms in response to an experimentally manipulated laboratory stress task and the remaining eight measured mental health symptoms. We found that short-term exercise interventions appeared to reduce anxiety like symptoms and anxiety sensitivity and buffered against a drop in mood following an experimentally manipulated laboratory stress task. There was limited available evidence testing the impacts of exercise on depression like symptoms and other mental health mental health domains, suggesting further work is required. Universities should consider implementing methods to increase student knowledge about the relationship between physical exercise and mental health and student access to exercise facilities.

Psychological Stress, Its Reduction, and Long-Term Consequences: What Studies with Laboratory Animals Might Teach Us about Life in the Dog Shelter

There is a long history of laboratory studies of the physiological and behavioral effects of stress, its reduction, and the later psychological and behavioral consequences of unmitigated stress responses. Many of the stressors employed in these studies approximate the experience of dogs confined in an animal shelter. We review how the laboratory literature has guided our own work in describing the reactions of dogs to shelter housing and in helping formulate means of reducing their stress responses. Consistent with the social buffering literature in other species, human interaction has emerged as a key ingredient in moderating glucocorticoid stress responses of shelter dogs. We discuss variables that appear critical for effective use of human interaction procedures in the shelter as well as potential neural mechanisms underlying the glucocorticoid-reducing effect. We also describe recent studies in which enrichment centered on human interaction has been found to reduce aggressive responses in a temperament test used to determine suitability for adoption. Finally, we suggest that a critical aspect of the laboratory stress literature that has been underappreciated in studying shelter dogs is evidence for long-term behavioral consequences—often mediated by glucocorticoids—that may not become apparent until well after initial stress exposure.

Together is Better During Acute Threat: Men and Women Desire Affiliation After Laboratory Stress Induction

<div>Adversity is a pervasive feature of human life, often contributing to poor physical and mental health outcomes. While social support can buffer against the negative consequences associated with stressful life events,</div><div>the conditions under which people seek to establish potentially protective social ties with others in times of distress require greater attention. In a classic study of affiliation, Schachter (1959) provided evidence that women exposed to laboratory stressors had an increased desire for being together. While evolutionary theory broadly predicts that women will seek to form beneficial relationships in stressful environments, when faced with acute threat, men may also benefit from affiliation in the form of coalitions. In the current study, following an adaptation of Schachter’s (1959) experiment, participants (N = 72; 59.7% female; Mage = 19.56 yrs; 74.6% White) were randomized into a</div><div>high-anxiety or low-anxiety group. Logistic regression analyses showed that both men and women in the high-anxiety condition were significantly more likely to desire affiliation than those in the low-stress condition and that participants experiencing anxiety were significantly more likely to desire affiliation than those without anxiety. This study replicates and extends Schachter’s (1959) findings, providing evidence that both men and women prefer to affiliate under conditions of acute stress, specifically within the context of physical threat.</div><div><br></div>

Together is Better During Acute Threat: Men and Women Desire Affiliation After Laboratory Stress Induction

<div>Adversity is a pervasive feature of human life, often contributing to poor physical and mental health outcomes. While social support can buffer against the negative consequences associated with stressful life events,</div><div>the conditions under which people seek to establish potentially protective social ties with others in times of distress require greater attention. In a classic study of affiliation, Schachter (1959) provided evidence that women exposed to laboratory stressors had an increased desire for being together. While evolutionary theory broadly predicts that women will seek to form beneficial relationships in stressful environments, when faced with acute threat, men may also benefit from affiliation in the form of coalitions. In the current study, following an adaptation of Schachter’s (1959) experiment, participants (N = 72; 59.7% female; Mage = 19.56 yrs; 74.6% White) were randomized into a</div><div>high-anxiety or low-anxiety group. Logistic regression analyses showed that both men and women in the high-anxiety condition were significantly more likely to desire affiliation than those in the low-stress condition and that participants experiencing anxiety were significantly more likely to desire affiliation than those without anxiety. This study replicates and extends Schachter’s (1959) findings, providing evidence that both men and women prefer to affiliate under conditions of acute stress, specifically within the context of physical threat.</div><div><br></div>

Physiological and subjective validation of a novel stress procedure: The Simple Singing Stress Procedure

Laboratory stress-induction procedures have been critical in illuminating the effects of stress on human health, cognition, and functioning. Here, we present a novel stress induction procedure, the Simple Singing Stress Procedure (SSSP), that overcomes some of the practical challenges and conceptual limitations of existing procedures in measuring the causal influence of stress on psychological variables. In the stress condition of the SSSP, participants were instructed to sing a song in front of the experimenter while being video- and audio-recorded. Participants were also informed that they would have to sing again at the end of the experiment, and that this second performance would later be assessed by a panel of experimenters. Participants in a no-stress condition instead read lyrics in each phase. Our findings revealed that participants in the stress condition showed significantly higher blood pressure immediately following the initial singing session, as well as heightened salivary cortisol at a latency consistent with the initial singing session, than those in the no-stress condition. Our stress procedure also generated elevations in self-reported stress ratings immediately after the first singing session and subsequently in anticipation of the second singing session, relative to the no-stress condition. Collectively, these findings suggest that the SSSP is a simple and effective stress induction procedure that may be a promising alternative to existing protocols.

La « compétence de la survie » du traducteur en zone de conflit : l’anxiété et la prise de décision

Translators and interpreters operating in the war zone face numerous factors that alter their cognitive and emotional capabilities, among which: fear, anxiety troubles and post-traumatic stress disorder. This article explains the cerebral processes that generate anxiety, emotion and cognitive complexity, advances the new notion of “laboratory stress” and establishes the link between these processes and anxiety and decision‑making. Finally, the article suggests emergency exists such as positive appraisal and the innovative notion of sociocognitive counter‑conditioning.