Abstract
In attempts to understand the social determinants of health, strong associations have been found between measures of loneliness, physiological stress processes, and physical and mental health outcomes. Feelings of loneliness are hypothesized to have implications for physiological stress processes, including activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. In a community sample of young adults, multilevel modeling was used to examine whether trait and state feelings of loneliness were related to changes in levels of the stress-sensitive hormone cortisol, and whether the associations between loneliness and cortisol were mediated or moderated by the presence of concurrent depression or high levels of chronic life stress. Results indicated that trait loneliness was associated with a flattening of the diurnal cortisol rhythm. In addition, both daily and momentary state variations in loneliness were related to cortisol. Prior day feelings of loneliness were associated with an increased cortisol awakening response the next morning and momentary experiences of loneliness during the day were associated with momentary increases in cortisol among youth who also had high chronic interpersonal stress. Results were significant after covarying current depression, both chronic and momentary reports of stress, and medical and lifestyle covariates. This study expanded on prior work by investigating and revealing three different time courses of association between loneliness and HPA axis activity in young adults: trait, daily and momentary.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 430-441 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Psychoneuroendocrinology |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 2010 |
Funding
The authors would like to thank the participants of the Northwestern Sleep and Stress Study in the Youth Emotion Project for the time and effort they contributed to this research. We thank Katie Mendelsohn, Jennifer Cueto, Amy DeSantis and the undergraduate research assistants who worked on this study for their assistance, time and support. We would also like to thank Greg Duncan, Louise Hawkley and Susan Mineka for comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. This research was conducted with the support of NIMH R01 MH65652 (Richard E. Zinbarg, Susan Mineka, Michelle G. Craske, Principal Investigators), a graduate fellowship from the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University to the primary author (L.D.D.) and a William T. Grant Foundation Scholars Award and an Institute for Policy Research Faculty Fellowship to the second author (E.K.A.). This research was financially supported by NIMH R01 MH65652 (R.E.Z., S.M., M.G.C., Principal Investigators), a graduate fellowship from the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University (L.D.D.) and a William T. Grant Foundation Scholars Award and an Institute for Policy Research Faculty Fellowship to the second author (E.K.A.). The granting agencies involved had no further role in the study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, in the writing of the manuscript or the decision to submit the article for publication.
Keywords
- CAR
- Cortisol diurnal rhythms
- HPA axis
- Loneliness
- Momentary emotion
- Young adults
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Endocrine and Autonomic Systems
- Psychiatry and Mental health
- Biological Psychiatry
- Endocrinology
- Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism
