elderly adults in Minnesota, Gillian Ice found that salivary cortisol measures of
stress were poorly correlated with mood (when controlling for other factors) and
self-reports of perceived stress, unlike results found with younger adults (Ice 2005 ),
suggesting a greater difference between physiological stress responses and con-
scious awareness of stress in the elderly. One study showed that when elderly
people are relocated within nursing homes, there is an increase in salivary cortisol
levels, with these levels returning to baseline levels within a few weeks of the
relocation (Hodgson et al. 2004 ). In examining the effect of one potential stressor in
the elderly, caregiving for grandchildren, cultural differences were found. In regions
where caregiving by the elderly is not common, such as the USA, caregiving is
associated with stress, and caregivers report more health problems than do
non-caregivers (Musil and Ahmad 2002 ; Ice et al. 2012 ). However, among the Luo
in Kenya where grandparental caregiving is both expected and accepted, there is
little difference in biomarkers of stress (cortisol and blood pressure) in caregivers
versus others (Ice et al. 2012 ).
Most studies of stress in everyday life have focused on adults. These studies
have shown cultural differences in self-reports of stress. Brown ( 1981 , 1982 )
studied a group of Filipino-Americans living on Oahu, Hawaii. The community
consisted of people from two Filipino ethnic groups with different native languages:
Ilocanos and Visayans. Using a subsection of the Cornell Medical Index (CMI) as a
self-report measure of stress, it was found that people from Visayan backgrounds
averaged significantly higher reported stress than Ilocanos. However, mean 24-h
excretion rates of norepinephrine and epinephrine were not different in the two
ethnic groups, as shown in Fig.7.3(Brown 1982 ). The results suggest that there
# Complaints or ug/g creatinine010203040Visayan
IlocanoCMI-Total CMI - Psychological Norepinephrine EpinephrineFig. 7.3 Comparisons of stress measures in two ethnic groups of Filipino-Americans residing in
Hawaii (Brown 1982 )
130 D.E. Brown