The Impact of Stressors on Mental Health Trajectories Across the Life Course

How do daily, chronic, and cumulative stressors shape mental health over time? People exposed to similar stress often follow very different paths. We look at daily, persistent stress, not just major trauma. We also separate types of stress (material, social) from forms of adversity (emotional, physical, sexual).

Using longitudinal and epidemiological data, including a three-wave study of CUNY students during COVID-19, we also examine the capacities that buffer stress: emotional awareness, perceived social support, and coping.

    • Urban marginalized communities carry a heavy stress burden than more affluent populations.

    • Emotion identification and processing mediate the link between trauma exposure and psychiatric distress.

    • Emotional understanding buffers the effects of financial strain and low social support.

    • Perceived social support, more than amount of social contact, predict lower depression and anxiety.

    • Perceived coping buffered anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    • Childhood adversity predicted new-onset depression, but not PTSD, in a national sample of National Guard soldiers.

    • Loneliness has distinct anxious and depressive forms. Rejection sensitivity and maladaptive object relations help explain chronic loneliness.

  • We led a three-wave study (April 2020, July 2020, December 2021–January 2022) of students at the nation’s largest urban public university.

    • We documented high rates of depression, anxiety, PTSD symptoms, alcohol use and suicidal ideation predicted by persistent stress.

    • Social stressors were stronger predictors of distress than financial hardship.

    • These findings added to early evidence on long-COVID and psychological distress.

    Together, these findings shift the focus from the traumatic event to a person’s ability to interpret, integrate, and emotionally process adversity.

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