Four studies were conducted to develop a measure of major and daily stressful events during adolescence, the Adolescent Perceived Events Scale (APES). Study I identified an item pool of events that were drawn from the open-ended reports of adolescents. In Study 2, multidimensional scaling analysis was used to identify the salient features of stressful events that were cognitively appraised by adolescents. Study 3 examined the test-retest reliability of the APES, and Study 4 examined the concurrent validity of the measure among older adolescents. Subsequent research is summarized that has shown the APES to be significantly related to behavior problems and psychological symptomatology in a wide age range of adolescents, and directions for future research are outlined.

Life events, perceived social support, and psychological symptoms were studied prospectively among older adolescents during the transition from high school to college. These variables were reciprocally related to one another in patterns which changed over a period of 6 months. The findings are supportive of a transactional model of stress that emphasizes reciprocal, rather than linear, paths of influence. Further, the study highlights the importance of studying stress and social support during life transitions that may constitute periods of greater vulnerability to life events.

In this review, the author evaluates the empirical support for the claims that various aspects of family dysfunction are risk factors for completed suicide or suicidal symptoms in childhood or adolescence. There is consistent evidence that a history of physical or sexual abuse is a risk factor and some evidence for other risk factors, including poor family or parent-child communication, loss of caregiver to separation or death, and psychopathology in first-degree relatives. However, the researchers of the vast majority of studies did not attend to whether the putative risk factors preceded the development of suicidal symptoms; thus, most of the claims regarding family risk factors are not justified by their research designs and findings.

Examined the roles of gender, instrumentality, and expressivity as moderator of the relations between stressful events and psychological symptoms in samples of junior high (n = 93), senior high (n = 140), and college students (n = 145). Female adolescents in all three samples reported more overall negative events than did males. Females in the junior and senior high samples reported more negative interpersonal stresses than did males. However, there were no indications in any of the samples of a stronger relation between negative events and psychological symptoms for adolescent females than males. Further, there was little evidence that instrumentality or expressivity moderated the relations between negative events and psychological symptoms. In each sample, certain stresses were most strongly related to psychological symptoms: family stresses in the junior high, peer stresses in the senior high, and academic stresses in the college sample. Implications of the findings for developmental changes in stress during adolescence are discussed.

The hypothesis that negative daily events mediate the relationship between major negative events and psychological symptomatology was tested using a three-wave, three-variable panel design. Measures of major and daily life events and psychological symptomatology were administered to 58 older adolescents at three time points during the transition from high school to college. The results indicated that the pathways from major life events to daily events and from daily events to psychological symptomatology were significant at each of the time points, but that the direct pathways from major events to psychological symptomatology were not significant at any time point. Thus, the hypothesis was fully supported. The findings are discussed in light of their implications for an integrative theory of the process by which major and daily events have an effect on psychological symptomatology.

Relationships among major life events, perceived social support, and psychological disorder were assessed in a sample of older adolescents. Negative life events and satisfaction with social support were significantly and independently related to a range of psychological symptoms. Further, the relationship between negative events and disorder was moderated by gender, the types of events experienced, and anticipated change in the psychosocial environment. The importance of the use of standardized and psychometrically sound measures of life events, social support, and psychological disorder is highlighted.

Research is reviewed on family risk factors for youth suicidal behaviors. Both fatal and nonfatal suicidal behaviors have been linked consistently to negative parent-child relationships (e.g., high conflict, low closeness), child maltreatment, residing with less than two biological parents, and family history of affective and antisocial disorders. Parental separation/divorces and family history of suicidal behavior and alcohol/substance abuse are more strongly associated with completed suicide than with other suicidal symptoms, but family systems problems (such as low cohesion and adaptability) and insecure parent-child attachments are more consistently associated with nonfatal suicidal symptoms than completed suicide. Future research will benefit from attending to the temporal sequencing of putative risk factors and suicidal symptoms and from greater use of observational methods and parental reports.

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