Mental Resilience and Coping With Stress: A Comprehensive, Multi-level Model of Cognitive Processing, Decision Making, and Behavior

Stress-related cellular pathophysiology as a crosstalk risk factor for neurocognitive and psychiatric disorders

In this narrative review, we examine biological processes linking psychological stress and cognition, with a focus on how psychological stress can activate multiple neurobiological mechanisms that drive cognitive decline and behavioral change. First, we describe the general neurobiology of the stress response to define neurocognitive stress reactivity. Second, we review aspects of epigenetic regulation, synaptic transmission, sex hormones, photoperiodic plasticity, and psychoneuroimmunological processes that can contribute to cognitive decline and neuropsychiatric conditions. Third, we explain mechanistic processes linking the stress response and neuropathology. Fourth, we discuss molecular nuances such as an interplay between kinases and proteins, as well as differential role of sex hormones, that can increase vulnerability to cognitive and emotional dysregulation following stress. Finally, we explicate several testable hypotheses for stress, neurocognitive, and neuropsychiatric research. Together, this work highlights how stress processes alter neurophysiology on multiple levels to increase individuals' risk for neurocognitive and psychiatric disorders, and points toward novel therapeutic targets for mitigating these effects. The resulting models can thus advance dementia and mental health research, and translational neuroscience, with an eye toward clinical application in cognitive and behavioral neurology, and psychiatry.

Structural model of resilience based on parental support: the mediating role of hope and active coping

Resilience is an essential trait in the academic and non-academic lives of students that has been associated with positive psychological and non-psychological outcomes. Given the importance and role of resilience, the main goal of this study was to create a structural model of resilience based on parental support and emphasizing the mediating role of hope and coping. The research design was correlational in nature and used structural equation modeling (SEM). The population of this study included high school students in Tehran city in 2019-2020 school year, and the sample consisted of 560 students selected by cluster sampling method. By applying Spearman correlation analysis and structural equation modeling, a significant relationship between hope, coping, resilience, and parental support was found. Both the SEM measurement and structural models provided a good fit. The significant findings of the present study include the direct and significant effect of parental support on resilience. The indirect and significant effect of parental support on resilience through the mediating role of hope and coping was also confirmed. Overall, the results of this study show that the effect of parental support on resilience can be improved by promoting hope and coping styles.

Attentional and Behavioral Disengagement as Coping Responses to Technostress and Financial Stress: An Experiment Based on Psychophysiological, Perceptual, and Behavioral Data

Discontinuance of information systems (IS) is a common phenomenon. It is thus critical to understand the decision process and psychophysiological mechanisms that underlie the intention and corresponding behaviors to discontinue IS use, particularly within the digital financial technology usage context, where continuance rates remain low despite increased adoption. Discontinuance has been identified as one coping behavior to avoid stressful situations. However, research has not yet explored this phenomenon toward digital financial technologies. This manuscript builds upon a pilot study that investigated the combined influence of technostress and financial stress on users’ responses toward digital financial decision-making tasks and aims to disentangle the specific impacts of unexpected technology behaviors and perceived financial loss on attentional and behavioral disengagement as coping responses, which may lead to discontinuance from digital financial technology usage. A two-factor within-subject design was developed, where perceived techno-unreliability as variable system response time delays under time pressure and perceived financial loss as negative financial outcomes were manipulated in a 3 × 2 design. Psychophysiological, perceptual, and behavioral data were collected from N = 15 participants while performing an adapted version of the Iowa Gambling Task. The results indicate that unexpected technology behaviors have a far greater impact than perceived financial loss on (1) physiological arousal and emotional valence, demonstrated by decreased skin conductance levels and curvilinear emotional valence responses, (2) feedback processing and decision-making, corroborated by curvilinear negative heart rate (BPM) and positive heart rate variability (HRV) responses, decreased skin conductance level (SCL), increased perceptions of system unresponsiveness and techno-unreliability, and mental workload, (3) attentional disengagement supported by curvilinear HRV and decreased SCL, and (4) behavioral disengagement as coping response, represented by curvilinear decision time and increasingly poor financial decision quality. Overall, these results suggest a feedforward and feedback loop of cognitive and affective mechanisms toward attentional and behavioral disengagement, which may lead to a decision of disengagement-discontinuance as a coping outcome in stressful human-computer interaction situations.

Integrative Brain Dynamics in Childhood Bullying Victimization: Cognitive and Emotional Convergence Associated With Stress Psychopathology

Bullying victimization is a form of psychological stress that is associated with poor outcomes in the areas of mental health and learning. Although the emotional maladjustment and memory impairment following interpersonal stress are well documented, the mechanisms of complex cerebral dysfunctions have neither been outlined nor studied in depth in the context of childhood bullying victimization. As a contribution to the cross-disciplinary field of developmental psychology and neuroscience, we review the neuropathophysiology of early life stress, as well as general psychological stress to synthesize the data and clarify the versatile dynamics within neuronal networks linked to bullying victimization. The stress-induced neuropsychological cascade and associated cerebral networks with a focus on cognitive and emotional convergence are described. The main findings are that stress-evoked neuroendocrine reactivity relates to neuromodulation and limbic dysregulation that hinder emotion processing and executive functioning such as semantic cognition, cognitive flexibility, and learning. Developmental aspects and interacting neural mechanisms linked to distressed cognitive and emotional processing are pinpointed and potential theory-of-mind nuances in targets of bullying are presented. The results show that childhood stress psychopathology is associated with a complex interplay where the major role belongs to, but is not limited to, the amygdala, fusiform gyrus, insula, striatum, and prefrontal cortex. This interplay contributes to the sensitivity toward facial expressions, poor cognitive reasoning, and distress that affect behavioral modulation and emotion regulation. We integrate the data on major brain dynamics in stress neuroactivity that can be associated with childhood psychopathology to help inform future studies that are focused on the treatment and prevention of psychiatric disorders and learning problems in bullied children and adolescents.

COVID-19 school closures and social isolation in children and youth: prioritizing relationships in education

We pursue an evidence-informed argument that interpersonal relationships in childhood and adolescence are central to achieving learning outcomes and that school closures across various parts of Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic have compromised these critical relationships, jeopardizing educational attainment. We highlight how the centrality of relationships with peers and educators in achieving learning goals is well established in the literature. So too is the importance of peers in creating stable mental health and wellness for children and youth. The pandemic context has drastically interfered with ongoing wellness, exacerbating feelings of loneliness and social isolation, which takes a toll on what children and youth can achieve in the virtual classroom. In the interest of reducing harm, we call on provincial/territorial governments to move quickly to ensure schools are open in the fall and to think carefully and consult effectively before any further closure decisions are made. We understand that safety is paramount and as such offer a framework for planning a safe return where necessary. Now more than ever there is a need to prioritize social–emotional learning opportunities to protect young people from the lasting effects of social isolation and threats to the fundamental need to belong that have been induced or exacerbated by the pandemic.