Overcoming fair-trade products’ price disadvantage with clever pricing decisions

In surveys, consumers affirm their preference for sustainable over conventional products. But in the supermarket, they often fall back on cheaper conventional alternatives. The higher price of sustainable products may explain the contradiction. Robert Wilken and David Bürgin write that partitioned pricing can make consumers aware of the ethical and sustainability benefits of fair-trade products, increasing their sales

What Protects Youth Residential Caregivers from Burning Out? A Longitudinal Analysis of Individual Resilience

Background: Professional caregivers are exposed to multiple stressors and have high burnout rates; however, not all individuals are equally susceptible. We investigated the association between resilience and burnout in a Swiss population of professional caregivers working in youth residential care. Methods: Using a prospective longitudinal study design, participants ( n = 159; 57.9% women) reported on burnout symptoms and sense of coherence (SOC), self-efficacy and self-care at four annual sampling points. The associations of individual resilience measures and sociodemographic variables, work-related and personal stressors, and burnout symptoms were assessed. Cox proportional hazards regressions were calculated to compute hazard ratios over the course of three years. Results: Higher SOC, self-efficacy and self-care were related to lower burnout symptoms in work-related and personal domains. Higher SOC and self-efficacy were reported by older caregivers and by those with children. All three resilience measures were highly correlated. A combined model analysis weakened the protective effect of self-efficacy, leaving only SOC and self-care negatively associated with burnout. Conclusion: This longitudinal analysis suggests that SOC and self-caring behaviour in particular protect against burnout. Our findings could have implications for promoting self-care practices, as well as cultivating a meaningful, comprehensible and manageable professional climate in all facets of institutional care

The Interplay between Child Maltreatment and Stressful Life Events during Adulthood and Cardiovascular Problems—A Representative Study

Psychological stress is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. While the relevance of early life stress, such as that which is due to child maltreatment (CM), is well known to impact individual stress responses in the long-term, and data on the interplay between CM and stressful events in adulthood on cardiovascular health are sparse. Here, we aimed to assess how stressful life events in adulthood are associated with cardiovascular health infarction in later life and whether this association is independent of CM. In a cross-sectional design, a probability sample of the German population above the age of 14 was drawn using different sampling steps. The final sample included 2510 persons (53.3% women, mean age: 48.4 years). Participants were asked about sociodemographic factors, adult life events, CM, and health conditions in adulthood. Results indicate that the number of experienced adverse life events in adulthood is associated with significantly increased odds for obesity (Odds Ration (OR)women = 1.6 [1.3; 2.0], ORmen = 1.4 [1.1; 1.9]), diabetes (ORwomen = 1.5 [1.1; 2.1], ORmen = 1.5 [1.1; 2.3]) and myocardial infarction (ORwomen = 2.1 [1.0; 4.3], ORmen = 1.8 [1.1; 2.8]). This association is not moderated by the experience of CM, which is associated with cardiovascular problems independently. Taken together, adult stressful life events and CM are significantly and independently associated with cardiovascular health in men and women in the German population in a dose-dependent manner. General practitioners, cardiologists and health policy-makers should be aware of this association between psychosocial stressors during childhood and adulthood and cardiovascular health

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Telomere Length a Look Into the Heterogeneity of Findings—A Narrative Review

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been associated with poor mental and somatic health. Accumulating evidence indicates that accelerated biological aging—indexed by altered telomere-related markers—may contribute to associations between ACEs and negative long-term health outcomes. Telomeres are repeated, non-coding deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequences at the end of chromosomes. Telomeres shorten during repeated cell divisions over time and are being used as a marker of biological aging.Objectives: The aim of the current paper is to review the literature on the relationship between ACEs and telomere length (TL), with a specific focus on how the heterogeneity of sample and ACEs characteristics lead to varying associations between ACEs and TL.Methods: Multiple databases were searched for relevant English peer-reviewed articles. Thirty-eight papers were found to be eligible for inclusion in the current review.Results: Overall, the studies indicated a negative association between ACEs and TL, although many papers presented mixed findings and about a quarter of eligible studies found no association. Studies with smaller sample sizes more often reported significant associations than studies with larger samples. Also, studies reporting on non-clinical and younger samples more often found associations between ACEs and TL compared to studies with clinical and older samples. Reviewing the included studies based on the “Stressor Exposure Characteristics” recently proposed by Epel et al. (2018) revealed a lack of detailed information regarding ACEs characteristics in many studies.Conclusion: Overall, it is difficult to achieve firm conclusions about associations of ACEs with TL due to the heterogeneity of study and ACE characteristics and the heterogeneity in reported findings. The field would benefit from more detailed descriptions of study samples and measurement of ACEs

The biopsychosocial sequel of childhood adversity from a developmental life-course perspective – from understanding to caring

Background: Childhood adversities belong to the most important risk factors for adverse functional outcomes in adulthood, comprising risk across biological, psychological and social domains. This long-term bio-psycho-social sequel of adversity spans from major medical diseases, diseases of aging and premature mortality, to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, to social outcomes including delinquency, poor educational outcomes, early parenthood, and low social support. In the last two decades, a huge publication effort around the long-term sequel of childhood adversities emerged and many studies replicated the obvious finding that cumulated childhood adversities have long-lasting and deleterious effects throughout an individual’s life-course. Aims: This cumulated dissertation adds to this heterogeneous body of research by looking at the biopsychosocial sequel of adversity from different theoretical perspectives. The research presented in this thesis investigates the prevalence, incidence, distribution and cumulation of adversities and subsequent trauma exposures in an attempt to provide understanding of adversity to shape individuals’ subsequent trajectories. Method: The studies presented in this thesis are based on different methodological approaches. First, we aggregated findings from the broad literature on the association between childhood adversity and telomere length as presented in a theory-driven review. Second and third, we used data from the large-scale U.S. population-based Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to analyze the cumulation and patterning of childhood adversity and adulthood trauma in older adults. Results: These studies show, first, the heterogeneity in findings of associations between adversities and telomere length in part through heterogenous assessments of adversities. Second, the compounding of stressors in that childhood adversities increase the risk for subsequent adulthood trauma and that beyond the association of cumulative scores there is a patterning of specifics. And third, that the incidence of specific exposures is embedded within the life-course and related to age, period or cohorts, which is important to consider disentangling fact from artefact. Discussion: From a theoretical standpoint, advancements in the conceptualization of stress and resilience will help to integrate stress responses and resilience processes, and research on risk and protective mechanisms. Improved and higher-resoluting measures of clearer concepts and heuristics will help to foster understanding of the adverse nature of certain types of exposures and will help to uncover different exposure-related mechanisms that mediate the association between childhood adversities and long-term bio-psycho-social outcomes. And in this way reduce the heterogeneity in findings related to imprecise measures of overlapping concepts. New approaches towards analysis, in particular theory-driven, person-oriented 7 modelling approaches, hold promise to improve our understanding of the cumulation of specific types of adversities within a developmental perspective as well as the subsequent divergent trajectories. Targeting mechanisms, mediators, and moderators that convey risks following childhood adversity will not only provide further understanding of said trajectories, but also highlight opportunities for prevention, intervention and caring efforts. Conclusion: Targeting childhood adversity at its roots is ethically imperative, a major public health concern, and an issue of social justice. When targeting adversity, a kilo of prevention might be worth a ton of intervention, but still the earlier the intervention the better. Both are preferrable to the costs of starting intervention decades later or doing neither. Understanding the bio-psycho-social sequel of childhood adversity – an interdisciplinary sequel by definition – is crucial to target these prevention and intervention efforts. Research tackling this sequel however has to keep up with the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of the problem it tries to address. There is more to be done, as safe childhoods confer lifelong benefits

Childhood Adversity and DNA Methylation in a High-Risk Sample (LOC-o-met)

Exposure to adverse experiences in childhood (childhood adversities, CA), such as child abuse and neglect, are risk factors for physical and mental disorder later in life. Children and adolescents with out-of-home placement are at a particularly high risk for having experienced CA with potential consequences for neurodevelopmental trajectories. These effects might depend on gene-environment interactions and be mediated through epigenetic modifications that affect gene expression, including DNA methylation. The goal of this project is to examine CA in relation to DNA methylation in genes relevant for mental wellbeing in a high-risk sample of adolescents and young adults with previous out-of-home placement