Browsing by Author "Brown, Ryan L"

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    A Lifespan Approach to Psychological and Physical Health: Attachment and Health in Older Adulthood
    (2022-04-19) Brown, Ryan L; Fagundes, Christopher P
    Early-life experiences profoundly impact people's physical and mental health across the lifespan. According to various theoretical models, this impact is most salient when confronted with stressful life experiences. Attachment theory provides a theoretical framework to understand individual differences in adult health related to how early-life experiences shape individuals’ perceptions of the self and others. Based on the need for further empirical investigation into early-life experiences and health in bereavement and related calls for a lifespan approach in psychology, this study examined the influence of early-life experiences with one's primary caregivers as a vulnerability (or diathesis) for poorer health in older adulthood generally, and in the context of spousal bereavement. A sample of 103 participants were interviewed about their childhood experiences with primary caregivers (using Adult Attachment Interviews, a well-established semi-structured interview technique) and were assessed based on depressive symptoms, grief symptoms (for bereaved participants only), self-rated health, and inflammation. There was no evidence in this sample that having a secure state of mind regarding attachment promoted better physical or psychological health; instead, there was preliminary evidence that an insecure attachment state of mind, specifically a dismissing attachment state of mind, was associated with better self-rated physical and emotional health and lower levels of IL-6sR. These findings provide novel insights into attachment system functioning and psychological and physical health in adulthood.
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    Bereavement and Food: An investigation of postprandial immune responses
    (2021-08-12) Brown, Ryan L; Fagundes, Christopher P.
    The death of a spouse is the most common stressful life event that adults are likely to face. As a result of prolonged physiological dysregulation, bereaved individuals are at considerable risk for morbidity and mortality, primarily in the first three months following bereavement and most commonly from heart disease. In my thesis, I examined how (a) bereavement status and (b) prolonged cognitive activation of a stressor (i.e., perseverative cognition) might influence inflammation after a high-fat meal. Following the death of one’s spouse, many bereaved individuals are at increased nutritional risk due to eating alone, skipping meals, and having a poorer overall diet. Bereaved spouses often attribute these changes to a loss of the shared experience of eating together. I hypothesized that people would experience different degrees of inflammation following a meal high in saturated fat based on (1) bereavement status and (2) their tendency to worry or ruminate (defined later as perseverative cognition). I recruited 14 recently bereaved and 14 matched controls who came to the lab for a blood draw before and 4 hours after eating a high saturated fat meal. Overall, there was mixed support for my hypotheses: (1) there were no reliable differences in postprandial inflammation based on whether a participant was bereaved or a matched control. (2) Although there was not an average increase in inflammation from pre- to post-meal in this study, higher levels of trait worry, but not rumination, were associated with increased postprandial inflammation, particularly among the bereaved participants.