In 2014, F. Rutters et al. of the University of Amsterdam published a paper on the effect of stress on mortality. The study followed 2,385 participants over a period of 20 years. Its findings showed that the more a person experienced stressful situations in life, the higher their risk was of premature death. This effect was exacerbated by smoking, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
In 2017, W.B. Mowrey et al. of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine published a study about the relationship between stress and cognitive impairment. By observing 507 older people (namely, their mental skills and stress levels), the scientists found a direct correlation. When the participants were divided into groups according to their stress levels, the group with the highest stress level showed 2.5 times more cognitive abnormalities.
A. Conklin et al. of the University of British Columbia published a paper in 2019 on the effects of stress on excess weight in Canadian teens. It found that when a teenage boy suffered one severely stressful event over the course of a year, his risk of obesity was 47%. If there were two or more stressful events, the likelihood of obesity doubled. For girls, this correlation appeared only when undergoing severe stress several times in one year.
In 1987, S. Zika of the Alliance on Aging and K. Chamberlain of Massey University published a study on the factors of subjective well-being. Through observations conducted on a sample of 120 students, it was shown that daily hardships and the stress associated with them negatively affected the subjects’ perceptions of their life. It was likewise shown to be influenced by the subjects’ self-confidence and overall self-control.