P02.34
Purpose: Early adversity may contribute to the development of a stress-vulnerable endophenotype – i.e., a tendency to experience more intense negative affect in response to daily stressors, attribute stressful events to personal short-comings (internalizing), and have poorer affective recovery. However, little research has explored whether early adversity and associated stress vulnerability makes individuals more or less likely to benefit from stress-reduction interventions. Objectives: 1) To evaluate the association between early adversity and response to Mindfulness intervention for parenting stress (HEART – Health Enhancement And Resiliency Training), and 2) To investigate whether endorsing a stress-vulnerable endophenotype may explain this relationship.
Methods: 25 premenopausal women with a range of chronic stress participated in the intervention, including four 6-hour workshops and weekly 1-hour calls over 12 weeks. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) was used to assess early adversity. Negative affective reactivity, recovery, and attributions in response to daily stressors were assessed using averages across a 7-day nightly diary. The primary outcome was perceived stress over the last month.
Results: Women endorsing higher CTQ scores experienced significantly greater decreases in stress from pre to post HEART (r=−.52, p=.008). Higher CTQ was also associated with greater negative affective reactivity to daily stressors (r=.45, p=.03), greater internalizing (r=.58, p=.003), and poorer recovery from feelings of shame (r=−.42, p=.04), but not negative affectivity in general (r=−.31, p=.14). In turn, women who endorsed more internalizing and slower recovery from feelings of shame had greater HEART-related reductions in stress (respectively: r=−.44, p=.027; r=.46, p=.02).
Conclusion: Women exposed to early adversity may benefit more from mindfulness interventions than those who were not. Heightened stress sensitivity may be a mechanism that helps explain this enhanced treatment response.
Contact: Kirstin Aschbacher, kirstin.aschbacher@ucsf.edu
