Impact of stress reduction instructions on stress and cortisol levels during pregnancy [An article from: Biological Psychology]

This digital document is a journal article from Biological Psychology, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This pilot study examined whether giving stress reduction (SR) instructions to pregnant women would be effective in regulating stress, mood, and cortisol levels during pregnancy. Forty-one predominantly low-income Latina women, receiving prenatal services at a public county hospital, completed measures of stress and mood (depressive symptoms, positive and negative affect) and provided morning and evening saliva samples to measure cortisol prior to and after receiving SR instructions. We hypothesized that adherence to these SR instructions would result in lower levels of stress, negative mood states, and cortisol levels when compared to baseline values. Repeated measures ANOVA analyses demonstrated significantly lower levels of stress (P