Hege Randi Eriksen (born 18 April 1965) is the Research Director of Uni Health [1] and Professor at the University of Bergen, [2] Norway.
Eriksen holds a Candidate Scientist in Sport and Physical exercise from the Department of Biology and Medicine, Norwegian University of Sport and Physical Education [3] and a Master of Science in Epidemiology from Erasmus University, Rotterdam.
In 1998 she earned a PhD at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, with the thesis ”Stress and coping: Does it really matter for subjective health complaints?” [4]
Eriksen published in international academic journals on stress and coping, subjective health complaints, sick leave and rehabilitation. [5] Together with colleague Holger Ursin she developed the Cognitive Activation Theory of Stress (CATS) [6] [7] [8] [9]
Hege R. Eriksen is the past president of the International Society of Behavioral Medicine. [10]
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat whereas the latter is defined as the emotional response to a real threat. It is often accompanied by nervous behavior such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints, and rumination.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psycho-social intervention that aims to reduce symptoms of various mental health conditions, primarily depression and anxiety disorders. CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions and their associated behaviors to improve emotional regulation and develop personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. Though it was originally designed to treat depression, its uses have been expanded to include the treatment of many mental health conditions, including anxiety, substance use disorders, marital problems, and eating disorders. CBT includes a number of cognitive or behavioral psychotherapies that treat defined psychopathologies using evidence-based techniques and strategies.
Stress management is a wide spectrum of techniques and psychotherapies aimed at controlling a person's level of stress, especially chronic stress, usually for the purpose of improving everyday functioning. Stress produces numerous physical and mental symptoms which vary according to each individual's situational factors. These can include a decline in physical health, such as headaches, chest pain, fatigue, and sleep problems, as well as depression. The process of stress management is named as one of the keys to a happy and successful life in modern society. Life often delivers numerous demands that can be difficult to handle, but stress management provides a number of ways to manage anxiety and maintain overall well-being.
Coping refers to conscious strategies used to reduce unpleasant emotions. Coping strategies can be cognitions or behaviours and can be individual or social.
Social support is the perception and actuality that one is cared for, has assistance available from other people, and most popularly, that one is part of a supportive social network. These supportive resources can be emotional, informational, or companionship ; tangible or intangible. Social support can be measured as the perception that one has assistance available, the actual received assistance, or the degree to which a person is integrated in a social network. Support can come from many sources, such as family, friends, pets, neighbors, coworkers, organizations, etc.
Worry refers to the thoughts, images, emotions, and actions of a negative nature in a repetitive, uncontrollable manner that results from a proactive cognitive risk analysis made to avoid or solve anticipated potential threats and their potential consequences.
Richard S. Lazarus was an American psychologist who began rising to prominence in the 1960s. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Lazarus as the 80th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. He was well renowned for his theory of cognitive-mediational theory within emotion.
Allostatic load is "the wear and tear on the body" which accumulates as an individual is exposed to repeated or chronic stress. The term was coined by Bruce McEwen and Eliot Stellar in 1993. It represents the physiological consequences of chronic exposure to fluctuating or heightened neural or neuroendocrine response which results from repeated or prolonged chronic stress.
An emotional bias is a distortion in cognition and decision making due to emotional factors.
Positive affectivity (PA) is a human characteristic that describes how much people experience positive affects ; and as a consequence how they interact with others and with their surroundings.
Cognitive appraisal is the subjective interpretation made by an individual to stimuli in the environment. It is a component in a variety of theories relating to stress, mental health, coping, and emotion. It is most notably used in the transactional model of stress and coping, introduced in a 1984 publication by Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman. In this theory, cognitive appraisal is defined as the way in which an individual responds to and interprets stressors in life. A variety of mental disorders have been observed as having abnormal patterns of cognitive appraisal in those affected by the disorder. Other work has detailed how personality can influence the way in which individuals cognitively appraise a situation.
The cortisol awakening response (CAR) is an increase between 38% and 75% in cortisol levels peaking 30–45 minutes after awakening in the morning in some people. This rise is superimposed upon the late-night rise in cortisol which occurs before awakening. While its purpose is uncertain, it may be linked to the hippocampus' preparation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) in order to face anticipated stress.
Psychological hardiness, alternatively referred to as personality hardiness or cognitive hardiness in the literature, is a personality style first introduced by Suzanne C. Kobasa in 1979. Kobasa described a pattern of personality characteristics that distinguished managers and executives who remained healthy under life stress, as compared to those who developed health problems. In the following years, the concept of hardiness was further elaborated in a book and a series of research reports by Salvatore Maddi, Kobasa and their graduate students at the University of Chicago.
In psychology, stress is a feeling of emotional strain and pressure. Stress is a type of psychological pain. Small amounts of stress may be beneficial, as it can improve athletic performance, motivation and reaction to the environment. Excessive amounts of stress, however, can increase the risk of strokes, heart attacks, ulcers, and mental illnesses such as depression and also aggravation of a pre-existing condition.
Postmenopausal confusion, also commonly referred to as postmenopausal brain fog, is a group of symptoms of menopause in which women report problems with cognition at a higher frequency during postmenopause than before.
Rona Moss-Morris is Head of Health Psychology and Chair in Psychology as Applied to Medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. Her research investigates long-term, medically unexplained disorders such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). She joined the IoP in 2011 and presented an inaugural lecture entitled "Trials and tribulations: A journey towards integrated care for long term conditions."
Perseverative cognition is a collective term in psychology for continuous thinking about negative events in the past or in the future.
Claus Lamm is a Professor of Biological Psychology and the head of the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Vienna. His research focuses on the psychological and biological mechanisms underlying social cognition, affect, and behavior. His main research interest are the neural underpinnings of empathy, to whose understanding he has made pioneering contributions.
Suzanne C. Segerstrom is a professor of Psychology and biostatistician at the University of Kentucky. She is known for her clinical research on optimism and pessimism in relation to health, stress, and general well-being.
Angela J. Grippo is an American neuroscientist and health psychologist known for her research on stress, mood disorders, and cardiovascular disease. She is an associate professor of psychology at Northern Illinois University.