The Relationship Between Salivary Measures and Perceived Stress and Anxiety in First Semester Pharmacy Students

The Anxiety and Depression Association of America defines stress as the response to a threat in a situation, whereas anxiety is the reaction to the stress1. This means the acute fight-or-flight stress response ends once the situation is resolved, but anxiety is the resulting, long-term worry that may be manifested in such symptoms as headaches, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, and insomnia. Marshall et al. (2008) reported mental health-related quality of life scores for third-year student pharmacists were significantly below U.S. mean scores for individuals aged 20 to 34 years old, and, as stress increased, their scores decreased2. Votta and Benau (2013) found year in pharmacy program correlated negatively with stress levels, with first year student pharmacists being most stressed3. Preliminary evaluation of survey data from this study found first year, first semester student pharmacists perceived to have experienced significantly more stress and anxiety later in the semester as compared to the start4. Therefore, it is hypothesized that physiological measures of stress will also increase over the semester, and therefore be directly related to survey measures of stress and anxiety. Lajaunie et al. (2016) found no clear preference among the comparator and three relaxation techniques in this study, other than student pharmacists rated the comparator (Power Posing) as being easiest to conduct4. In contrast, it is hypothesized that treatment differences will be found when using changes in physiological measures to more objectively assess effects on student pharmacists. Ultimately, findings will be used to encourage student pharmacists to mitigate stress and anxiety levels