Assistant Professor of Psychology Laura Grafe is among the researchers highlighted in a Time magazine article about ambient stress, or “stress that’s running in the background, below the level of consciousness,†according to New York-based clinical psychologist Laurie Ferguson.
Grafe, who along with Associate Professor of Psychology Laurel Peterson and Andrew Gargiulo, a post-doctoral fellow in , authored about stress, coping, resilience, and sleep during the pandemic, explains that humans have evolved to cope with short-term stressors, but not constant stress.
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“Everything else just seems worse with chronic stress of the pandemic going on in the background,†says Grafe.
A behavioral neuroscientist, Grafe suggests mindfulness exercises and cognitive behavioral therapy as helpful coping techniques for chronic stress.
Grafe runs , a behavioral neuroscience lab at Â鶹AV, where she studies how stress affects the brain and may lead to behavioral phenotypes relevant to mental health.