Optimism also appears to be associated with lower levels of distress, slower disease progression and improved survival rates in patients with HIV ( Ironson and Hayward, 2008), and certain types of cancer ( Allison et al., 2003 Carver et al., 2005 de Moor et al., 2006), and comparable protective effects of optimism on psychological and physical well-being have been reported in caregivers ( Hulbert and Morrison, 2006), undergraduate students adapting to the first college semester ( Segerstrom et al., 1998), pregnant women ( Fontaine and Jones, 1997) and elderly people ( Giltay et al., 2006a). Optimistic individuals recover more quickly following cardiac-related events such as coronary artery bypass surgery and myocardial infarction, with a more rapid return to a normal lifestyle and a better reported quality of life ( Agarwal et al., 1995 Scheier et al., 1989). Together these findings suggest that optimism may promote health, by counteracting stress-induced increases in inflammation and boosting the adjuvant effects of acute stress.ĭispositional optimism, defined as the generalized expectation that good rather than bad things will occur in one’s life, has been related to better psychological and physical well-being, particularly during times of heightened stress ( Scheier and Carver, 1992 Smith and MacKenzie, 2006). Across the complete sample, more optimistic individuals had smaller increases in negative mood and less reduction in mental vigour. However, in the vaccine/stress group, there was a strong positive association between optimism and antibody responses, indicating that stress accentuated the antibody response to vaccine in optimists. Stress had no effect on antibody responses overall. Typhoid vaccine induced a significant increase in participants’ circulating anti-Vi antibody levels. This relationship was present across both stress groups (combining vaccine and placebo) and was not present in the vaccine/stress group alone, suggesting that optimism protects against the inflammatory effects of stress rather than vaccine per se. In the stress condition, optimism was inversely related to IL-6 responses, independent of age, BMI, trait CES-D depression and baseline IL-6. Volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions in which they received either typhoid vaccine or saline placebo, and then rested or completed two mental tasks. Here we carried out further analysis of this sample to investigate the relationship between dispositional optimism and stress-induced changes in immunity and mood. In a double-blind placebo-controlled study, we recently showed that acute psychological stress and an immune stimulus (Typhim-Vi typhoid vaccine) synergistically increased serum levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and negative mood in 59 healthy men.
Evidence suggests that optimism may be protective for health during times of heightened stress, yet the mechanisms involved remain unclear.
0 kommentar(er)
