Resilience, Mental Flexibility, and Cortisol Response to the Montral Imaging Stress Task in Unemployed Men.

Abstract

Resilience is the ability to overcome adversity and successfully adapt to threatening or challenging situations. Stress is a common experience and a facet of everyday life yet persistent stress and high stress load have negative effects on psychological and physical health. Even in the face of extreme adversity and chronic stress, not all individuals demonstrate negative outcomes and/or lack of resilience; reasons for this are uncertain but one likely factor is a person’s capacity to think flexibly. This study investigated resilience, perceived and physiological stress associated with unemployment in 80 men previously employed. The relationship between mental flexibility and resilience was explored as was how resilience may moderate the stress axis response to a controlled psychological challenge (The Montreal Imaging Stress Task). The majority of men reported increased perceived stress since becoming unemployed. High levels of perceived stress were associated with poor mental flexibility; twenty-three subjects were at a level of impairment. Poor mental flexibility negatively impacted capacity for resilience. Unemployed men exhibited significantly lower scores on the Conner-Davidson Resilience Scale (mean 72.49, SD 13.05) as compared to published norms. Subjects with higher levels of resilience (n = 27) demonstrated a greater capacity for mental flexibility, were better able to respond to feedback, re-frame the way they saw an object and arrive at the correct response pattern sooner with less overall errors on the Short Category Test. The majority of subjects demonstrated a lack of response to the Montreal Imaging Stress Task hindering ability to assess the impact of resilience on the stress axis response. No significant relationship was found among resilience and salivary cortisol, blood pressure or pulse rate. The study demonstrates the importance of mental flexibility as a key component to resilience. Nurses caring for the unemployed should focus on therapeutic techniques that decrease stress and improve mental flexibility in attempts to foster resilience. Future research is needed to explore the adequacy of the MIST to elicit an acute stress response in diverse populations and to explain the relationship among the differing aspects of mental flexibility, such as intentionality, inhibition, and executive memory that may further moderate resilience.