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SUNY OSWEGO STUDY SHOWS TERRORISM RAISES STRESS RESPONSE IN CHILDREN | |
| Contact: Brooks Gump Phone: 315-312-4150 Email: gump@oswego.edu Embargoed until: March 5, 2004 |
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ORLANDO - The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, echoed in the cardiovascular systems of children for months afterward, a new study at the State University of New York at Oswego shows. Before 9/11, Gump and his colleagues at the upstate New York college were testing children's cardiovascular response to acute stress tasks presented in the laboratory. In comparison to children tested before the terrorist attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, a significantly heightened response to acute stress was noted for children tested directly following 9/11/2001. Continued testing revealed a significant decline in differences over the course of the year following the terrorist attacks and by one year following the 9/11 attacks, differences between the groups were no longer significant. Brooks Gump, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Oswego presented these findings today (March 5, 2004) at the 62nd annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society. The study sample consisted of 118 children participating in an ongoing study of cardiovascular responses to acute stress, an indicator of sympathetic nervous system activation. Prolonged or exaggerated sympathetic nervous system activation is implicated in a number of the pathophysiological processes that may set the stage for cardiovascular disease. Both systolic blood pressure and length of pre-ejection period were exaggerated in children tested directly following 9/11/2001. "These findings suggest that directly following the 9/11 attacks, children did respond differently to new, smaller, stressors. Their cardiovascular system was more reactive to these stressors." Gump said. "Fortunately, these effects seemed to be relatively short lived and cardiovascular responses to acute stress returned to normal by one year following the attacks. In other words, it is unlikely these children will have any lasting health effects as a result of these transient effects on cardiovascular reactivity." | |
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Psychosomatic Medicine is the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychosomatic Society, published bimonthly. For information about the journal, contact Vicki White, Managing Editor for Manuscript Production,
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