Abstract
The emergence of wearable sensors that allow for unobtrusive monitoring of physiological and behavioural patterns introduces new opportunities to study the impact of stress in a real-world context. This study explores to what extent within-subject trends in daily Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and daily HRV fluctuations are associated with longitudinal changes in stress, depression, anxiety, and somatisation. Nine Dutch police officers collected daily nocturnal HRV data using an Oura ring during 15–55 weeks. Participants filled in the Four-Dimensional Symptoms Questionnaire every 5 weeks. A sample of 47 five-week observations was collected and analysed using multiple regression. After controlling for trends in total sleep time, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and alcohol use, an increasing trend in the seven-day rolling standard deviation of the HRV (HRVsd) was associated with increases in stress and somatisation over 5 weeks. Furthermore, an increasing HRV trend buffered against the association between HRVsd trend and somatisation change, undoing this association when it was combined with increasing HRV. Depression and anxiety could not be related to trends in HRV or HRVsd, which was related to observed floor effects. These results show that monitoring trends in daily HRV via wearables holds promise for automated stress monitoring and providing personalised feedback.
Highlights
Stress can be defined as a relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding one’s resources and endangering one’s well-being [1]
Since this study explores moderating effects between those two trends, using a coefficient of variation means that a small portion of the variation of the daily Heart Rate Variability (HRV) trend is included in the daily HRV fluctuations metric, increasing the likelihood of a type II error occurring and making it less ideal than using a seven day rolling standard deviation within the aims of this study
This study hypothesised that increasing trends in daily HRV fluctuations and decreasing trends in daily HRV are associated with five-week increases in (1) stress, (2) depression, (3) anxiety, and (4) somatisation, and that increasing trends in daily HRV buffer against the positive association between the uptrends in daily HRV fluctuations and increases in these outcomes
Summary
Stress can be defined as a relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding one’s resources and endangering one’s well-being [1]. Policing is a good example of a physically and psychologically demanding job that can cause stress [4]. Chronic stress is associated with neuro-endocrine changes [5] and an increased risk of physical [6], mental illness [7], and absenteeism [8]. The emergence of wearable sensors that allow for unobtrusive monitoring of physiological and behavioural patterns introduces new opportunities to study the impact of stress in a real-world context [9]. If trends in daily HRV observations can be related to mental health outcomes, it enables possibilities for early recognition of the impact of stress and personalised stress counselling based on objective feedback. This study, explores to what extent daily HRV trends are related to longitudinal changes in several mental health outcomes in police officers. We provide a detailed description of HRV and how its daily fluctuations may be a relevant proxy for homeostatic disturbances, and we describe this study’s hypotheses
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
