Understanding how young people respond to stress: the FemNAT-CD study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Understanding how young people respond to stress: the FemNAT-CD study
IRAS ID
164670
Contact name
Graeme Fairchild
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 9 days
Research summary
This project is an extension of a larger ethically-approved study investigating the neurobiology of severe antisocial behaviour (termed conduct disorder) funded by the European Commission. This sub-study will focus on neuroendocrine and psychophysiological responses to a lab-based psychological stress task. It will also study changes in the levels of stress hormones (eg.cortisol) over two typical school days. The aim of the study is to investigate differences in stress hormone secretion in male and female children and teenagers with and without conduct disorder. We will invite participants who took part in our previous study to participate in this study extension. Participants will be called again or sent invitation letters and asked if they wish to participate. However, there will also be some participants that haven't taken part in the other study (see section A13). The study will be divided into two stages.
Stage 1 involves an additional task that will take place at the University of Southampton. It will investigate cortisol secretion during a psychosocial stress induction procedure (the Trier Social Stress Task for Children; TSST-C). The TSST-C was established over 20 years ago and has been used widely since then (Buske-Kirschbaum et al., 1993, Buske-Kirschbaum et al., 1997). In addition, similar psychosocial stress tests have been used in previous research on male adolescents with conduct disorder and healthy controls (Popma et al., 2006). As well as salivary cortisol, we will measure changes in heart rate during the stress task as another measure of stress reactivity and subjective responses to stress.
Stage 2 will involve collecting saliva samples at six timepoints across the day to study the circadian profile of cortisol secretion under naturalistic conditions.
REC name
West Midlands - Edgbaston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/WM/0086
Date of REC Opinion
19 May 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion