Parent strategies to help emerging adults manage stress are associated with their mental health: A dyadic coping perspective

Emerging adults (EAs) are at high risk for mental health challenges and frequently reach out to their parents for support. Yet little is known about how parents help emerging adults manage and cope with daily stressors and which strategies help and which hinder EA mental health. In this cross-sectional pilot study of students at a 2- and 4-year college (ages 18-25, N = 680, mean age = 19.0), we extend models of dyadic coping from intimate relationships to the parent-emerging adult relationship and test whether six specific parent strategies to help emerging adults manage stress are associated with EA mental health. Emerging adults with parents who provided problem and emotion-focused supportive dyadic coping, delegated dyadic coping, and common/joint dyadic coping reported fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as higher levels of psychological well-being. In contrast, college-attending emerging adults who reported higher levels of parent-provided negative dyadic coping reported higher levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms and lower psychological well-being. Parent-emerging adult dyadic coping is a fruitful area for future research and intervention development.

Work and Non-Work Sickness Presenteeism: The Role of Workplace COVID-19 Climate

OBJECTIVE

To test the role of workplace coronavirus disease (COVID-19) climate in shaping employee attitudes toward the CDC prevention guidelines and subsequent levels of work and non-work sickness presenteeism.

METHODS

Three waves of anonymous survey data were collected in October and December 2020 and February 2021. Participants were 304 employed adults in the U.S., of whom half were working onsite.

RESULTS

Time 1 workplace COVID-19 climate was positively associated with Time 2 employee attitudes toward the CDC prevention guidelines, which in turn predicted Time 3 levels of non-work and work sickness presenteeism.

CONCLUSIONS

The workplace can shape employee attitudes toward the CDC COVID-19 prevention guidelines and their work and non-work sickness presenteeism, thus highlighting the important role companies have in reducing community spread of the novel coronavirus in work and non-work settings.

Coping with job insecurity: Employees with grit create I-deals

Although job insecurity has been shown to predict numerous adverse outcomes, more is yet to be known about the mechanisms that explain when and why these effects will occur. Using social exchange as our theoretical foundation and three-wave lagged survey data collected from N = 300 employees within the United States, the current study found support for the contention that individuals with greater job insecurity pursue fewer idiosyncratic deals (I-Deals) with their employers. Fewer I-Deals in turn were associated with lower affective commitment, and higher turnover intentions, perceived psychological contract breach, and psychological contract violation. However, these indirect effects were conditional upon employee levels of grit (specifically, perseverance of effort), such that higher grit attenuated the negative relationship between job insecurity and the pursuit of I-Deals. Given that employees often have little control over the source of their experienced job insecurity (e.g., impending layoffs, a poor economy, announced merger or acquisition), these findings hold promise in potentially alleviating the well-documented negative outcomes of job insecurity through interventions designed to increase employee levels of grit and facilitate the creation of I-Deals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Visualizing CTL activity for different CD8+ effector T cells supports the idea that lower TCR/epitope avidity may be advantageous for target cell killing

Time-lapse video microscopy allows analysis of the interaction between individual CTLs and adherent peptide-pulsed targets, from contact, to lymphocyte detachment, APC rounding, phosphatidylserine exposure and finally loss of plasma membrane integrity characteristic of end-stage apoptosis. Using in vitro-stimulated effectors specific for the ovalbumin K(b)OVA(257) (OT-I) and influenza A virus D(b)NP(366) and D(b)PA(224) epitopes, no significant correlation was found between the duration of CTL contact and the time to phosphatidylserine exposure or loss of membrane integrity. Furthermore, there were minimal indications that transgenic T cells specific for the K(b)OVA(257) epitope (TCR) diversity had any effect. However, when the analysis was repeated with D(b)NP(366) and D(b)PA(224)-specific CTLs recovered directly from the lungs of mice with influenza pneumonia, the lower avidity D(b)NP(366)-specific set was found to elute much more quickly. Shorter contact time may allow individual CTLs to lyse more targets, suggesting that lower TCR/epitope avidity may be more beneficial than higher epitope avidity for cell-mediated immunity.

Effects of cues on memory in alcoholics and controls

This study was conducted to determine whether alcoholics' memory difficulties are due, in part, to access (retrieval) or to availability (retention) deficits. Forty-four alcoholics (n = 20 females) and 44 controls (n = 22 females) learned a paired associate list consisting of 12 adjective-CCC trigram pairs. Half of the subjects in each group learned the list to a low degree of learning (DOL; 4/12 pairs); the remainder to a high DOL (8/12 pairs). Two distinct environmental contexts (providing implicit cues) were used during acquisition. Subjects then completed a cued recall (an explicit cue) test in either the same or a different room. Alcoholics were significantly inferior in the acquisition phase on trials required to reach criterion, regardless of DOL required [F(1,68) = 10.92, p = 0.002]. The main effect for implicit cuing was not significant; similarly, there were no significant interactions. In contrast, the explicit cue manipulation produced a significant group x DOL interaction on the number of trigrams correctly recalled [F = (1,77) = 6.38, p = 0.01]; alcoholics' recall did not benefit from the higher DOL in contrast to a significant improvement in recall by controls. The failure of alcoholics to demonstrate improvement with higher levels of learning is consistent with a deficit in the availability of information. The results confirm previous reports of recovering alcoholics' verbal learning and memory dysfunction, and suggest that these deficits may be attributed, in part, to a deficit in the availability of information (retention).

Synthesis and biological activity of 3-[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl]-5-[(1,1-dioxo-5-methyl-1,2,5-thiadiazolidin- 2-yl)-methyl]-1H-indole and analogues: agonists for the 5-HT1D receptor

A novel series of 5-(1,1-dioxo-1,2,5-thiadiazolidin-2-yl)tryptamines was designed, synthesized, and evaluated as 5-HT1D receptor agonists. Compounds such as 8d,f,k were identified which had comparable affinity, potency, and receptor selectivity to that of the antimigraine drug sumatriptan. Both 8d,k were found to be well absorbed in the rat with oral bioavailabilities of 66% and 62%, respectively. Additionally, 8d was found to be selective over other non-serotonergic receptors and exhibited relatively low central nervous system penetration.