How Teens Deal with Stress May Affect Their Long-Term Health

Most teens get stressed out by their families from time to time, but whether they bottle those emotions up or put a positive spin on things may affect certain processes in the body, including blood pressure and how immune cells respond to bacterial invaders, according to Penn State researchers.

The researchers explored whether the strategies adolescents used to deal with chronic family stress affected various metabolic and immune processes in the body. Strategies could include cognitive reappraisal — trying to think of the stressor in a more positive way — and suppression, or inhibiting the expression of emotions in reaction to a stressor.

The team found that when faced with greater chronic family stress, teens who used cognitive reappraisal had better metabolic measures, like blood pressure and waist-to-hip ratio. Teens who were more likely to use suppression tended to have more inflammation when their immune cells were exposed to a bacterial stimulus in the lab, even in the presence of anti-inflammatory signals.

Hannah Schreier, assistant professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State, said the results suggest that the coping skills teens develop by the time they are adolescents have the potential to impact their health later in life.

Emily Jones, graduate student in biobehavioral health at Penn State, said the results — recently published in Psychosomatic Medicine — help therapists and counselors better work with children and adolescents who live in stressful environments.

“Exposure to chronic stress doesn’t always lead to poorer health outcomes, in part because of differences among people,” Jones said. “As our study findings suggest, there may be ways to help someone be more resilient in the face of stress by encouraging certain emotion regulation strategies. For children in stressful living situations, we can’t always stop the stressors from happening, but we may be able to help youth deal with that stress.”

Although previous research has linked chronic stress during childhood with such conditions as depression, autoimmune disorders and cardiovascular disease, the researchers said less is known about why some people under chronic stress develop these conditions while others do not. While it was thought that emotional regulation may play a role, the researchers were not sure exactly how.

To better explore how different ways of regulating emotions can affect different aspects of physical health, the researchers gathered data from 261 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16 years.

The researchers interviewed the participants about the relationships and chronic stress within their families, as well as measured the participants’ waist-to-hip ratios and blood pressure. The adolescents also completed questionnaires about how they regulated their emotions.

“While we would have to follow up with more studies, the results could lend support to the idea that reappraising a situation during times of stress could be beneficial,” Jones said. “For a mild stressor, this could be as simple as reframing a bad situation by thinking about it as a challenge or an opportunity for growth.”

Excerpted from “How teens deal with stress may affect their blood pressure, immune system” published by Pennsylvania State University. Read the full story to learn more.

Source: Pennsylvania State University | How teens deal with stress may affect their blood pressure, immune system, https://news.psu.edu/story/551056/2018/12/18/research/how-teens-deal-stress-may-affect-their-blood-pressure-immune-system |  Pennsylvania State University © 2019

A screening can help you determine if you or someone you care about should contact a mental health professional. Care Coordinators can arrange a free 30 minute Care Consultation so you can explore options with an expert. Call or email our Care Coordinators at 650.688.3625 or careteam@testing.chconline.org to set up an initial Consultation appointment.