Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Distress tolerance refers to a person's subjective ability to withstand and tolerate negative emotional states in response to a stressor. People who are low in distress tolerance will likely avoid or escape these emotions while people who are high in distress tolerance will better cope with and face them. Distress tolerance is thought to contribute to (when low) or protect from (when high) many problem behaviours. For example, individuals may engage in self-injury because they have a low ability to tolerate distress. They also experience higher physiological reactivity to negative emotions. This idea may be of interest in the study of chronic stress. Chronic activation of the stress response is associated with inflammation, which is associated with health problems and death. It is possible, therefore, that distress tolerance may be an important factor to consider in the association between chronic stress, physiological reactivity and health. We hypothesize that those high in distress tolerance will experience less physiological reactivity to chronic stress and less health problems than those who are low in distress tolerance. We will examine this hypothesize among parents of children with autism who represent a chronically stressed population because of the difficulties associated with caregiving. We will assess daily stressors, inflammation via blood and saliva samples, and distress tolerance and psychosocial functioning via questionnaires.This study can provide important information regarding distress tolerance as a risk factor for developing health problems. Distress tolerance could then be targeted by psychological interventions to contribute to better psychological well-being, but also to better physical health.