One paper focuses on the body's physiological response to the chronic stress of caring for an adult child with mental illness. Specifically, this paper examines how the interaction of daily life stresses and the caregiving role leads to a dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (one of the body's stress systems) characterized by lower cortisol awaken response and a more gradual rate of decline throughout the day. The long-term effects of this pattern of HPA dysregulation on the caregiver's health are discussed as well as social work interventions to restore health. A second paper analyzes data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health DNA subsample to examine environmental, genetic, and self-regulatory effects in predicting polydrug use and substance-related problems. The findings suggest that adolescent males with vulnerable genotypes (DAT1 risk alleles or DRD2 risk alleles) may be more susceptible to peers who are misusing substances than individuals without this genetic risk profile. The mediating pathways linking genetic vulnerability to substance-related problems are complex and identified using structural equation modeling. These findings suggest that treatment attention to key mediators along the biosocial continuum may preempt or deflect some of the substance-related problems before they become too severe. The third paper examines the relationship between two biological and two non-biological measures of stress in sample of 230 African-American women living in a large urban Midwestern city. Although the two biological markers of stress (i.e., diurnal salivary cortisol and serum cortisol) are strongly correlated, neither biological marker was correlated with perceived stress as measured by the Perceived Stress Scale and the Life Events Questionnaire. The findings from this study suggest that measures of stress cannot be used interchangeably and that perceived stress does not necessarily reflect biological processes.
These studies focus on very different populations and problem areas that have been a core focus of social work practice and research for decades. The symposium will demonstrate the potential for new insights that inform social work practice when social work researchers embrace the inclusion of biological and genetic biomarkers into our research studies.
