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Associations between (sub) clinical stress- and anxiety symptoms in mentally healthy individuals and in major depression: a cross-sectional clinical study

BACKGROUND: Responses to stressful circumstances have psychological and physiological dimensions, and are related to anxiety symptoms and mental disorders such as depression. Nonetheless, the relationship between subclinical stress and anxiety symptoms is still elusive. METHODS: To explore possible...

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Autores principales: Konstantopoulou, Georgia, Iliou, Theodoros, Karaivazoglou, Katerina, Iconomou, Gregoris, Assimakopoulos, Konstantinos, Alexopoulos, Panagiotis
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7466802/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32873278
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02836-1
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author Konstantopoulou, Georgia
Iliou, Theodoros
Karaivazoglou, Katerina
Iconomou, Gregoris
Assimakopoulos, Konstantinos
Alexopoulos, Panagiotis
author_facet Konstantopoulou, Georgia
Iliou, Theodoros
Karaivazoglou, Katerina
Iconomou, Gregoris
Assimakopoulos, Konstantinos
Alexopoulos, Panagiotis
author_sort Konstantopoulou, Georgia
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Responses to stressful circumstances have psychological and physiological dimensions, and are related to anxiety symptoms and mental disorders such as depression. Nonetheless, the relationship between subclinical stress and anxiety symptoms is still elusive. METHODS: To explore possible associations between stress and anxiety symptoms, patients with major depression (N = 77) and mentally healthy individuals of different age clusters and occupations (N = 412) were enrolled into the study. Stress was assessed with the new subclinical stress symptom questionnaire (SSQ-25). Anxiety was studied with the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), mainly focusing on clinical anxiety, whilst anxiety as a personality trait was assessed with the trait aspect of the State Τrait Αnxiety Ιnventory Y (STAI Y). Statistical analyses included ANOVA, Scheffe test, linear regression models and a two-step cluster analysis using Log-Likelihood Distance measure and fixed number of two clusters. RESULTS: Age, stress symptoms and BAI scores differed significantly between among groups (P < 0.001), whilst STAI Y scores did not. Stress levels were found to be related to clinical anxiety (P < 0.001), while neither group identity nor age exerted any influence on anxiety levels (P > 0.05). The two Step Cluster analysis classified 76 out of 77 participants with milder stress (subclinical) symptoms into the cluster with moderate anxiety, as indicated by BAI scores, and all individuals with more severe stress into the severe anxiety cluster. CONCLUSIONS: The observed associations between stress and anxiety shed light on the interrelations between even very mild (subclinical) stress and anxiety symptoms and may point to the potential of mild stress to serve as a target for early interventions aiming to prevent anxiety morbidity.
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spelling pubmed-74668022020-09-03 Associations between (sub) clinical stress- and anxiety symptoms in mentally healthy individuals and in major depression: a cross-sectional clinical study Konstantopoulou, Georgia Iliou, Theodoros Karaivazoglou, Katerina Iconomou, Gregoris Assimakopoulos, Konstantinos Alexopoulos, Panagiotis BMC Psychiatry Research Article BACKGROUND: Responses to stressful circumstances have psychological and physiological dimensions, and are related to anxiety symptoms and mental disorders such as depression. Nonetheless, the relationship between subclinical stress and anxiety symptoms is still elusive. METHODS: To explore possible associations between stress and anxiety symptoms, patients with major depression (N = 77) and mentally healthy individuals of different age clusters and occupations (N = 412) were enrolled into the study. Stress was assessed with the new subclinical stress symptom questionnaire (SSQ-25). Anxiety was studied with the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), mainly focusing on clinical anxiety, whilst anxiety as a personality trait was assessed with the trait aspect of the State Τrait Αnxiety Ιnventory Y (STAI Y). Statistical analyses included ANOVA, Scheffe test, linear regression models and a two-step cluster analysis using Log-Likelihood Distance measure and fixed number of two clusters. RESULTS: Age, stress symptoms and BAI scores differed significantly between among groups (P < 0.001), whilst STAI Y scores did not. Stress levels were found to be related to clinical anxiety (P < 0.001), while neither group identity nor age exerted any influence on anxiety levels (P > 0.05). The two Step Cluster analysis classified 76 out of 77 participants with milder stress (subclinical) symptoms into the cluster with moderate anxiety, as indicated by BAI scores, and all individuals with more severe stress into the severe anxiety cluster. CONCLUSIONS: The observed associations between stress and anxiety shed light on the interrelations between even very mild (subclinical) stress and anxiety symptoms and may point to the potential of mild stress to serve as a target for early interventions aiming to prevent anxiety morbidity. BioMed Central 2020-09-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7466802/ /pubmed/32873278 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02836-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Konstantopoulou, Georgia
Iliou, Theodoros
Karaivazoglou, Katerina
Iconomou, Gregoris
Assimakopoulos, Konstantinos
Alexopoulos, Panagiotis
Associations between (sub) clinical stress- and anxiety symptoms in mentally healthy individuals and in major depression: a cross-sectional clinical study
title Associations between (sub) clinical stress- and anxiety symptoms in mentally healthy individuals and in major depression: a cross-sectional clinical study
title_full Associations between (sub) clinical stress- and anxiety symptoms in mentally healthy individuals and in major depression: a cross-sectional clinical study
title_fullStr Associations between (sub) clinical stress- and anxiety symptoms in mentally healthy individuals and in major depression: a cross-sectional clinical study
title_full_unstemmed Associations between (sub) clinical stress- and anxiety symptoms in mentally healthy individuals and in major depression: a cross-sectional clinical study
title_short Associations between (sub) clinical stress- and anxiety symptoms in mentally healthy individuals and in major depression: a cross-sectional clinical study
title_sort associations between (sub) clinical stress- and anxiety symptoms in mentally healthy individuals and in major depression: a cross-sectional clinical study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7466802/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32873278
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02836-1
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