Stress Clinical Trials

Background: Negative emotional states can affect a person s behavior as they make decisions. For example, hunger may make people more impatient; they may then make riskier choices. Other negative emotional states that can change behavior include stress, pain, and sadness. By learning more about how emotions affect thinking and behavior in healthy people, researchers hope to better understand how to identify and treat people with mental disorders. Objective: To learn how negative emotions affect the brain and decision-making behavior. Eligibility: Healthy people aged 18 to 55 years. Design: Participants will have 3 clinic visits in 3 weeks. Participants will fill out questionnaires. They will be asked about their personal history, their personality, and state of mind. For 2 visits, participants will be assigned to different groups. Each group will experience 1 type of emotional stressor: Some participants will watch a video. Some will have to do arithmetic problems. Some will have heat applied to an arm or leg. Some will experience cold by immersing their hand in ice water. For a snack craving test, some will be tempted by food after a 4-hour fast. During these tests, participants will have sensors attached to their bodies. They will be videotaped. Saliva samples will be collected. After the stressors, participants will do tasks on a computer. They will need to make choices. Some participants will perform these decision-making tasks while lying in a brain scanner for functional magnetic resonance imaging. The brain scan involves lying on a table that slides into a cylinder that takes images of the brain. ... Read Less

The goal of this study is to better understand how stress impacts people's ability to learn across their experiences and link new information to what they already know. The investigators will compare performance on a memory task between stressed and non-stressed participants. This memory task requires people to integrate knowledge across learning experiences (think: having to "connect the dots", draw inferences, and generalize your knowledge to new situations and scenarios). Cortisol, the brain's primary stress hormone, will be measured at multiple points throughout the study to measure stress levels. The investigators hypothesize that: 1. Stress will disrupt performance on the memory task by interfering with memory processes that enable linking of related memories. 2. Higher cortisol levels, which reflect a greater stress response, will relate to greater deficits in memory performance across participants. This research has broad implications for understanding how stress impacts the ability to learn and retain new information, particularly in high-stress environments like schools and workplaces. Additionally, this work may provide insights into the cognitive difficulties experienced by individuals with psychiatric disorders, where stress can worsen memory and learning challenges. Read Less

The investigators have developed interactive, multimedia-intensive, computer-based treatment programs that include depression (Problem-Solving Therapy), stress management, and conflict management. Together the three modules are called PATH. The problem-solving module is based on an evidence-based psychotherapy called Problem-Solving Therapy in which depressed patients identify problems in their lives and work through a structured format for solving these problems. We have subjected the problem-solving module to Phase 1-3 feasibility, acceptability and efficacy trials which have been positive and without adverse events. The conflict program uses a cognitive-behavioral-therapy-based approach. The program includes a conflict briefing, an interactive conflict simulation, a conflict assessment tool, an interactive training exercise in interest-based negotiation, and a cognitive restructuring exercise. The stress program also uses a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) approach. In the program, the mentor introduces the "stress pyramid", which demonstrates how stress triggers can lead to different feelings, actions and thoughts, which are analogs to the CBT realms of dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behaviors, and faulty cognitive processes. The stress management content is delivered over 6 sessions, with each session including exercises in the 3 domains of thoughts, feelings, and actions. The program includes briefings, cognitive restructuring exercises, interactive scenarios, and self-assessments. This program has been evaluated with law and business students and was shown effective in reducing stress levels. The purpose of the current study is to make the problem-solving, stress, and the conflict modules available through the internet for any adult 18 or older in order to assess their feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness under naturalistic conditions. Read Less

The Cocooned Moms Study is a pre- and post-design study primarily aimed at reducing stress, depressive symptoms, and blood pressure among expectant Black women by providing them with free access to the InovCares mobile app. InovCares is a culturally-sensitive telehealth platform designed for community-based care coordination in maternal care. It also offers a culturally tailored maternal mental health program, which provides access to resources addressing social determinants of health, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), interpersonal therapy, and compassion-focused therapy (CFT), along with peer-to-peer support and gamification. The study will evaluate the impact of these interventions on reported stress levels, depressive symptoms, sleep quality, and blood pressure (BP) among Black pregnant women. Read Less

The investigators are conducting a two-site randomized control trial with the aim of defining the impact of music (M) without or with parent voice (MPV) on very preterm infants' acute and cumulative stress, intranetwork connectivity on term brain MRI, and language and other neurodevelopmental outcomes at two years corrected age. This is based on the hypothesis that infants in MPV arm are expected to experience the greatest benefit compared with infants receiving standard care. Read Less

The purpose of the study is to better understand the effects of cannabis in relation to mental and physical states including its relationship with mood, cognition, perception including the experience of temperature and pain, and heart rate. We expect that participants will be in this research study for approximately one week. The total amount of time that participants will spend completing study tasks will be about 2.5 hours across two separate in-person visits. Read Less

The purpose of the study is to understand whether different stress management interventions impact stress among HCT cancer caregivers and patients. Read Less

The study plans to enroll a total of 132 patients. The goal of this study is to measure pre-and post-music intervention changes in patients' vital signs, serum- and plasma-level biomarkers by broad-spectrum proteomics analysis, metabolic analysis, and perceived pain, anxiety, and mood states as measured by validated questionnaires (STAI-S, POMS-SF, and VASP). We will collect demographic information on each participant. Participants will also complete the Brief Musical Experience Questionnaire (BMEQ) to investigate potential links between susceptibility to music-induced anxiolysis and prior musical training, preference and exposure. Read Less

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Alzheimer's Disease-Related Dementias (ADRD) not only exact a heavy toll on patients, they also impose an enormous emotional, physical, and financial burden on unpaid, often family, caregivers. The strain of providing care for a loved one diagnosed with AD, often across several years, is associated with elevated depression risk and poorer overall health. Emotion regulation skills represent an ideal target for psychological intervention to promote healthy coping in ADRD caregivers. The project seeks to use an experimental medicine approach to test the efficacy and biobehavioral mechanisms of a novel, relatively brief, targeted, scalable, smartphone-based cognitive emotion regulation intervention aimed at improving psychological outcomes (i.e., reducing perceived stress, caregiver burden, and depressive symptoms) in ADRD unpaid primary caregivers as well as examine potential benefits of the caregiver intervention on quality of life in care recipients. Cognitive reappraisal is the ability to modify the trajectory of an emotional response by thinking about and appraising emotional information in an alternative, more adaptive way. Reappraisal can be operationalized via two primary tactics: psychological distancing (i.e. appraising an emotional stimulus as an objective, impartial observer) and reinterpretation (i.e., imagining a better outcome than what initially seemed apparent). The project will investigate the efficacy and underlying biobehavioral mechanisms of a novel, one-week cognitive reappraisal intervention in this population, with follow-up assessments at 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 3 months. ADRD unpaid primary caregivers will be randomly assigned to receive training in either distancing, reinterpretation, or a no regulation natural history control condition, with ecological momentary assessments of self-reported positive and negative affect, remotely- collected psychophysiological health-related biomarkers (i.e., heart rate variability data) using pre-mailed Polar H10 chest bands, and health-related questionnaire reports. Distancing training is expected to result in longitudinal reductions in self-reported negative affect, longitudinal increases in positive affect, and longitudinal increases in HRV that are larger than those attributable to reinterpretation training and no-regulation control training. Read Less

This study will test the immediate and long term (post 4 weeks of daily practice) effectiveness of two breathwork practices, cyclic sighing and box breathing, in comparison to hypnosis and an audiobook about stress, on psychological and physiological variables. Read Less

This is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled proof-of-concept clinical trial to assess the efficacy and safety of Magnesium-vitamin B6in combination with treatment as usual for treating symptoms of depression, stress, and anxiety in patients with first episode bipolar I disorder. Read Less

The study is a multiple cohort, staggered-entry, waitlist randomized controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of a comprehensive resiliency-based program in reducing stress for correctional officers employed by the Leon County Sheriff's Office in Tallahassee, FL. Read Less