Social Stress, Allostatic Load and Psychopathology

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The role of social stress in the development and maintenance of psychiatric disorders has been addressed in various diagnostic categories including anxiety disorders, major depression, schizophrenia, addiction and personality disorders. Across diagnostic categories, high rates of severe and/or chronic stress have been reported and have been related to altered activity of brain and neuroendocrine systems in subsets of patients, but similarly for different DSM diagnoses. With the assumption that social stress produces its effect on the background of genetic and developmental vulnerability, this project will investigate the hypothesis that a subset of patients within the DMS-categories of schizophrenia and affective disorders can be characterized by markers of allostatic load (such as neuroendocrine responses and negative affect), by structural and functional brain responses that may be related to psychopathology, and by markers of (mal)adaptation to high allostatic load (such as altered affect and reward processing, drug abuse), and that this pattern is related to severe and chronic social stress experience during childhood and adolescence. As a longterm goal, a longitudinal assessment of indicators of illness in relation to perception of and responses to social stress should elucidate, whether allostatic load and consequent brain and body changes are interrelated fostering vulnerability to social stress.