Life stress and maladaptation of children

Abstract

Social environmental variables differentiating maladapting children from matched controls in four inner-city elementary schools were investigated. Teacher selection was used to identify the maladapting children. Identified maladapting children were more likely to have been on welfare and to have experienced significantly more stressful life events during the previous year than the matched control children. The maladapting group was subdivided into welfare and non-welfare groups. Comparisons between groups on the life stress event measures indicated that the nonwelfare maladapting group experienced more life events than either the nonwelfare controls or the maladapting welfare children. The measures of life events correlated with parent ratings of behavior problems for the nonwelfare maladapting group but not for the welfare maladapting or the control groups.

Risk factors for drug use among adolescents: concurrent and longitudinal analyses.

“…' Although it is not too surprising that many teenagers have experimented at some time with various drugs, problems begin to arise when this experimental use becomes regular use or abuse. In a national survey,2 43 per cent reported at least one instance of heavy drinking (five or more drinks) during the past two-week period. In addition, 18 per cent reported at least weekly use of marijuana, and 6 per cent reported daily use.…”

Psychosocial impairment in offspring of depressed parents

“…Stress: Major life events in the year preceding T 1 assessed the occurrence of 14 negative life events to self or significant others (i.e., parent, sibling, other relative, or close friend; selected from the Schedule of Recent Experiences, Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Life Events Schedule, Sandler & Block, 1979). At T 3 , this construct assessed 33 events occurring to the offspring or significant others (i.e., parent, sibling, other relative, or close friend) selected from the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Holmes & Rahe, 1967), and the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Inventory (Dohrenwend et al, 1986) in the year preceding T 3 .…”

Moving as a stressful life event for adolescents

“…Both parents and teachers perceive children as a "more vulnerable" population during a move. This vulnerability expresses itself in periodic difficulties in adaptation to the new environment and the adopting of a regressive attitude (Sandler & Block, 1979). In comparison to Holmes and Rahe's findings for adults, who rated moving house as 28th out of 43 stressful life events, mental health workers and teachers, participating in a study conducted by Chandler (1981), rated moving house for children to be 19th out of 37 stressful life events.…”

“…Elements related to the Older Siblings Factor were mentioned significantly by respondents participating in the pilot studies and the professional literature. So, too, Sandler and Block (1979) point to the importance of older siblings as a form of substitute parents especially in areas related to social support. It was, therefore, decided to include the older sibling support items in the study.…”